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TREATISE ON HOMER, 



MISCELLANEOUS QUESTION: 



THE REV. JOHN R. DARLEY, A.M. 

Jftastev of tl)c 2£ogal Scljool of Utragamion. 



»« 



HI pKr'n 



DUBLIN : SAMUEL J. MACHEN, 8, D'OLIER-ST. 

LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, AND COMPANY, 
AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 

. \f3 c \ 



TO THE 

STUDENTS OF DUNGANNON COLLEGE, 
THE FOLLOWING TREATISE 

1* DEDICATED Bf 

THEIR AFFECTIONATE FRIEND AND PRECEPTOR, 

JOHN R. DARLEY. 



PREFACE. 



The following Treatise was compiled solely for 
the use of my~pupils. I had originally no intention 
of publishing or even printing it. I have been 
urged to do both. From the interrupted manner 
in which it has been written, arising from multi- 
plied and manifold calls upon my time, it must be 
liable to many imperfections and defects, perhaps 
to many errors. If it tend, in any degree, to assist 
the youth of our country in their study of the 
father of Grecian poetry ; if it form the least addi- 
tion to the many improvements which have been 
latterly introduced into our Schools, I shall con- 
sider myself more than rewarded for the time I 
have spent on it, and the labour it has cost me. 
It can boast of little that is original. It is merely 
a condensation of what is most valuable in the 
works of many original writers and commentators 
on Homer. To Coleridge I am particularly in- 
debted. I have also consulted the works of Butt- 

mann, Thiersch, Heyne, Kennedy, Trollope,Wood, 

a 2 



VI PBEFACE, 

Valpy, Matthiae, &c. &c. Most of the Miscella- 
neous Questions have been extracted from the 
Classical Examination Papers of the Dublin ano 
Cambridge Universities. 

On the whole, I trust that a good deal of in- 
formation will be presented, in a condensed form 
and at a low price, to many who may not have 
the opportunity, the time, or the means, of^ con- 
sulting the original authorsr 

Dungannon College, June 24th, 1839. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER L 

HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN AND PRESERVATION OF THE 
ILIAD. 

Origin. — Popular Opinion — Wolfian Theory — its originators 
and supporters — Arguments in favour of the popular opinion 
— Answers to these arguments — Objections to the popular 
opinion — Answers to these objections — Arguments against 
the use of writing in Homer's age — Answers to these argu- 
ments — Arguments for the uee of writing in Homer's age — 
Instances of feats of memory performed by others — Objec- 
tions to those instances — Arguments in favour of the Wolfian 
hypothesis — Objections against it . i 

Preservation and Improvement. — Three races of Rhap- 
sodes—many productions attributed to Homer — cause of this 
— views of Solon in patronising the Homeric Poems — 
Lycurgus — Pisistratus— Hipparchus — advantages and disad- 
vantages resulting from the revisal of the Homeric Poems 
by the Pisistratidae — diccDauctarrv — diopQurns — xprnxo* — ^^a.^^a- 
Tjo-TTif — ypoc/x/AdTuos — upvudo] — mode of interpretation styled 
*p*7iK,TUr) — allegorical interpretation — liofimas v.ar avlpx and 
ttoXmxa* — dt6?Qu<ris — vrtxgdZovts — s*tWi? — irpo'cX%o<Tis — tTTtxtioGu— • 

—Zenodotus— Aristophanes— Aristarchus— Crates . 13 



T11L 



CHAPTER II. 

THIRD BOOK OF THE SCIENZA NUOVA OF VICO. 

■Arguments against the opinion of Plato and Plutarch, that 
Homer possessed all the recondite knowledge of a civilized 
age — Country of Homer — Age of Homer— Arguments to 
prove both — Characters in tragedy borrowed from Homer — 
Philosophical observations — Philological observations 26 



CHAPTER III. 

GREEK ALPHABET AND MATERIALS FOR WRITING. 

Cadmus — Phenician alphabet — Simonides — Epicharmus— Pala- 
medes — Aristophanes — 'luvix* <yf*fj.^%Ta. — Greek alphabet 
evidently of Oriental origin — Bovs-rpo<pr,ooy ypipeiv — xjowiSo* 
yp*$etv — Materials of writing . • , 33 

CHAPTER IV. 

LIFE OF HOMER. 

Two extant biographies of Homer — Arguments for and against 
the genuineness of that ascribed to Herodotus — Origin of 
epithets Melesigenes and Moeonides — Derivations of his 
name — Pronepides — Phemius — Mentes — Homer's accurate 
and extensive knowledge of geography — Mentor — Cause of 
blindness — Not born blind — Farthest points eastward and 
westward mentioned in his poems — Ground of the conjecture 
that he visited Judea — Cause of his death — Nine countries 
claim the honour of being his birth-place— Ground of their 
claims — Arguments to prove that Homer was an Asiatic 
Greek — Bryant's theory — Koliades — Geographical difficulties 
against Sir William Gell's opinion, that Thiaki corresponds 



with the ancient Ithaca — .Answered — Schubarth — Thiersch — 

Maciucca — Barnes — Different opinions about the age of 
Homer— Deduced by Wakefield from his use of the digamina 
— Evidence from the poems positive and negative— Positive 
evidence favourable to an early date - two objections to the 
theory of Wood and Mitford, which supports an early date- 
Answered — Negative evidence favours an early date — Mitford 
completes the evidence furnished by the Poet himself— Ground 
of Homer's popularity — Admired by Latin as well as Greek 
writers — Particular defects censured by his admirers — Six 
objections of Zoilus — Christian fathers — Eustathius — Leon. 
tius Filatus— Scaliger— Tasso — French Zoilists and their 
opponents . , . . ,87 



CHAPTER V. 

THE TROJAN CONTROVERSY. 

Not of modern date — Stesichorus — Euripides — Herodotus — 
Theocritu? — Isocrates — Chry^ostom — Metrodorus — Anaxa- 
goras — Thueydides — Bryant — Arguments of Bryant — An- 
swered — Wood's description of the Troade - 58 



CHAPTER VI. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE ILIAD. 

Antiquity of the Iliad— Manners— Similar to the Patriarchal- 
Instances of similarity — Chivalry of Greeks analogous, not 
similar, to modern chivalry — Morals of the Homeric heroes 
— Present manners of the Arabs similar to those of the Ho- 
meric age — Stability of the manners of the Arabians— Six 
points of resemblance between the ancient Greek and Jewish 
and the present Arabian manners — Mythology of Homer — 



Peculiarity of the Mythology of tie Iliad—Opinion of He- 
rodotus about the Greek Thcogony — Idolatry unknown ir 
Homer's time — Difference of the Mythology in the Iliad 
Odyssey, iEneid, and Pharsalia— Continued allegorical inter- 
pretation unreasonable— Systems of Iamblichus and Porphyr] 

— Origin of Greek Mythology figurative— Foundation partlj 
physical, partly historical— System of Euhemerus — Deities 
of _ Jupiter's race chiefly moral figures — Homer's system o; 
theology not derived from Egypt, but from an accurate obser 
vation of nature— His theological opinions' — His scenery 
real and Grecian, gives an air of probability to his wildesi 
excursions of fancy — Causes of the opinion of the critics 
that there is an exquisite artifice in the plan of the poem— 
Apion— Inconsistencies in Homer — Objection to the gene- 
rally received opinion of the subject of tbe poem — Answered 
by Coleridge — Primary argument according to Penn — Objec- 
tion of Coleridge to this hypothesis — Characteristics of the 
poem — Most sublime passage in the Iliad — Homeric, He- 
siodie, and Virgilian shields — Contest of Homer and Hesiod 

— Characters of the Iliad — Similes — Homer a picturesque 
writer in one sense of the word — Knowledge of the Arts — 
Geography — Navigation — Military art — Language — Digamms 
— Versification — Caesura — Arsis — Vis J*Tar<x-o— shortening 
of long vowels or diphthongs--- Coneptiones Atticoe — Apos- 
trophe and Crasis — Synizesis — Greek poetry cultivated before 
Homer — Three things must be proved before it be admitted 
that Homer used the digamma— Dunbar's six laws — Apparenl 
deviations— Position of the Ictus, according to Dunbar, ir 
Heroic, Iambic, Trochaic, and Anapaestic verse — Its effect- 
Examples — Error of critics — Four cases in which the prin 
ciple of the Ictus holds— Olen— Thierch's explanation of the 

principles of Homeric versification — Bucolic Caesura — Ex 
cellency of hexameter verse — Epic period — Its beauty- 
Hiatus — When not offensive . . . 6( 



XI 



CHAPTER VII. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE ODYSSEY. 

Arguments in favour of the Iliad and Odyssey, being the com- 
positions of the same author— Arguments for a difference of 
authors — The manners of the Iliad and Odyssey, though 
resting on the same heroic base, differ in degree — In the 
mythology there is a striking change — The plan of the Odys- 
sey differs from that of the Iliad, and imports a great advance 
in the art of composition— Peculiar charm of the Odyssey — 
The Odyssey a reflection of contemporary society — As a poem 
absolutely unique — Prominent characters of the Odyssey — 
Marked difference between the Iliad and Odyssey — Com- 
parison of the Iliad and Odyssey with the plays of Shaks- 
peare — Instances of allegory — Similes — Changes in the form 
of words indicate a date subsequent to that of the Iliad — 
Versification — Contrast and resemblance of the Iliad and 
Odyssey — Difference between the Homeric and all the Greek 
poetry of subsequent ages — Instance in the Odyssey of a 
form of government similar to that of Britain — Latest event 
mentioned in the Odyssey — Names of the northern and 
southern divisions of Greece . . . 125 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Miscellaneous Questions . . . 142 



TREATISE ON HOMER 



CHAPTER I. 



HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN AND PRESERVATION OF THE 
ILIAD AND ODYSSEY. 

ORIGIN. 

1 . Was the Homeric question ever started among 
the ancients ? Yes. Seneca says, " Graecorum 
iste morbus fuit, quserere prior scripta esset Ilias 
an Odyssea ; prseterea an ejusdem esset auctoris." 
2. The first originators among the moderns of 
the Wolfian theory \ Francis Hedelin, better 
known as the Abbe d 1 Aubignac, and Charles Per- 
mult, at the close of the seventeenth and beginning 
of the eighteenth century. Dean Prideaux hinted, 
in his life of Mahomet, that Homer's Rhapsodies 
were compiled out of his loose poems, as the Koran 
was after Mahomet's death ; then Bmtley expressed 
an opinion, that Homer composed^ the Iliad for the 
men and the Odysseis for the women, in a sequel* 
of Rhapsodies to be sung by himself at festivals ; 
and that these loose songs were not collected into 
the form of an epic poem until about five hundred 
years after. The outline of Wolf's theory was 

* The word sequel is of importance in determining Bentley 3 
opinion. 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 



sufficiently clearly sketched by Vico, in his " Sci- 
enza Nuova, 11 published at Naples in 1730 ; then 
Wolf, in his Prolegomena, and Heyne, in his 
Excursus, completed the theory. 
^%%v**^-< 3. The critics of the Alexandrian school, who 
separated the age and authorship of the Iliad and 
Odyssey, were called x^pi^ovree. P. Knight (in 
his Prolegomena) and Milman (in the Quarterly 
Review) hold this opinion, though in other respects 
they oppose the Wolfian theory. 

4. Who supplied Wolf with the main foundation 
of his system ? Villoison, by his publication of 
the Venetian Scholia, though he himself was bit- 
terly opposed to it. 

5. Opinion of Longinus \ That Homer com- 
posed the Iliad in his youth, and the Odyssey in his 
old age. Pascal considered that Homer wrote a 
romance to amuse ; that Troy and Agamemnon 
never existed. 

6. Vico concludes, from the diversities of style 
in the Homeric poems, &c. that they were the pro- 
duction of various Rhapsodes, first arranged into 
the Iliad and Odyssey by the Pisistratidae — the 
Iliad to have been composed in North Eastern 
Greece, and the Odyssey in Western Greece, about 
the time of Numa, four centuries and a half after 
the Trojan war ; the Pisistratidae being expelled a 
short time before the Tarquins. 

7. The Homeric question refers only to the 
Iliad, for no one can question the Odyssey to have 
been the composition of an individual poet. 

8. There are three ways, according to Heyne, in 
which the Iliad may have been composed. First, 
by one author, and with unity of design, but this 
original unity of form was lost in Western Greece, 
by means of the desultory recitation of parts only 
by the itinerant Rhapsodes, and this unity was 
restored by the Pisistratidae ; this is the popular 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 6 

opinion. Secondly, the general plan of the poem 
may have been conceived by one author, and the 
outlines of the epic argument traced, which were 
afterwards filled up by the introduction of various 
parts. Thirdly, it may have been no more than a 
skilful combination of poems by different authors 
on the same subject — viz. the Trojan war ; this is 
the Woman theory. To these may be added 
Bentley's opinion, that Homer wrote his poems in 
such short rhapsodies as he could recite separately, 
and that they were for the first time put together 
by Pisistratus. 

9. What are the arguments in favour of the 
popular opinion ? First, the general belief of the 
earliest and greatest writers of antiquity, as Hero- 
dotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle, who sets 
up the Iliad as a standard of epic unity and per- 
fection. Second, the artificial construction of the 
plots. Third, the unity of design, of action, and 
of character, which pervades the poems ; the same 
peculiarities of language and of sentiment, and the 
intimate connexion which subsists between the 
whole and every part. 

10. How are these arguments answered by its 
opponents \ The first proves too much, and there- 
fore nothing ; "for Besides the Iliad, Odyssey, Mar- 
gites, Batrachomyomachia, hymns and epigrams, 
at least twenty other poems were attributed to 
Homer, which are now acknowledged not to be his, 
therefore neither may the Iliad and Odyssey. In 
the time of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato, the 
investigation of the genuineness of national com- 
positions formed no part of scientific criticism, 
much less of the duties of the philosopher and his- 
torian. These authors quote Homer merely for 
historical evidence, or censure him for moral or 
political reasons ; and for these purposes a refer- 
ence to the poems was equally proper, whether the 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 



common belief as to their origin was founded in 
fact or not. Second , the artificial construction of 
the plots of the "Iliad and Odyssey prove, on the 
contrary, that their present form cannot be genuine, 
for none of the cyclic poets who followed Homer 
imitated this construction — never plunged in inedias 
res, never laid distant trains for future catas- 
trophes, (as Mihnan, whose argument this is, says 
is so remarkable in the Iliad,) never carried on 
parallel lines of argument, never depressed others 
in favour of the hero of the poem, were ignorant 
of concealments, turning points, windings up, but 
uniformly began with the egg — story succeeding 
story in historical order, and concluding when the 
war was at an end. Many of these poets were men 
of genius, and it was an easier task to rival the 
plots than the poetry of the Homeric epics. Third, 
there is no necessary connection between the rhap- 
sodies that constitute the poem. Did the Iliad 
terminate at the death of Hector, and were thus 
the two last books omitted, or if the catalogue of 
the ships and troops was left out, would the design 
be less perfect, or the poem less connected ? Aris- 
tophanes, Aristarchus, P. Knight, &c. reject from 
the two hundred and ninety-seventh verse of the 
twenty-third book of Odyssey to the end ; the 
Necyomanteia, in the eleventh book of Odyssey, is 
also considered spurious ; others reject the last 
book of the Iliad. Why may not more be rejected ? 
And does not this prove that there were other 
poets capable of writing so similarly to Homer, 
that early antiquity never doubted the identity of 
their authorship I — and some of the most splendid 
passages in the poems are contained in those re- 
jected parts ; several gaps also still remain, suffi- 
cient to show where distinct poesies have been 
unskilfully joined together, as from the three 
hundred and fifty-sixth to the three hundred and 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 5 

sixty-eighth verse of the eighteenth book of the Iliad, 
which contain a dialogue between Jupiter and 
Juno, awkwardly thrust in between the speech of 
Achilles to his myrmidons and the arrival of 
Thetis at the mansion of Vulcan ; and the violent 
change of scene in the fourth book of the Odyssey, 
verse six hundred and twenty, from Sparta to 
Ithaca. There are several diversities of language 
between the Iliad and Odyssey, (as we shall see 
hereafter,) and Vico uses this as an argument 
against the identity of the authorship of the 
poems. 

11. What are the objections against the popular • 
opinion 1 First , it is inconceivable how any indi- / Ljuhj^ 
vidual should have suddenly appeared, in the midst 

of a barbarous age, with a mind capable of pro- 
ducing an epic poem so perfect in every point of 
art, diction, versification, character, and action. /> > 
Secondly , did such a person exist, how could h&S~£-%**4*> 
have executed his plan ? The art of writing, (it is 
said by Josephus and others,) and certainly the use 
of manageable writing materials, was unknown in 
the period in which he is supposed to have lived ; 
and the preservation, but especially the invention 
and composition of the Iliad, consisting of fifteen 
thousand lines, and the Odyssey of as many more, 
together with the Margites, Batrachomyomachia, 
and hymns, on the authority of Thucydides and 
Aristotle, is, without the aid of writing materials, * 6 
utterly impossible. Thirdly, even were it admitted CoU^f 
that poems so long could have been invented and I 

remembered by one man, under all these disadvan- 
tages, for what end could it have been designed ; 
it was too long for one recital, and thus the author 
must have laboured at a work which would serve 
no purpose. 

12. Answer to first objection ? Paterculus ob- 
serves of Homer, " Negue ante ilium, quern ille 



& 



O TREATISE ON HOMER. 

imitaretur, neque post ilium qui eum imitari posset, 
inventus est." Now if the latter part of this 
assertion is confessedly true, why might not the 
former be true also 2 Poetry is not, like science, 
progressive ; but a bright genius arises at intervals, 
surpassing all before and after him — " Poeta nas- 
citur, non fit." 

13. Answer to the second objection ? It consists 
of two parts — first, the non-existence of the art of 
"writing and of writing materials is by no means 
certain ; second, did they not exist, the composi- 
tion of the Homeric poems is posssible without 
them, as similar feats of the human memory have 
been accomplished. 

14. Answer to the third objection? Granting 
that the Iliad is too long for one recitation, it is 
not unreasonable, from our knowledge of the Greek 
character, to suppose a succession of recitations at 
some public festival ; thus Herodotus read his his- 
tory at the Olympic Games. 

15. Arguments against the use of writing in 
Homer's age ? First, the testimony of Josephus, who 
mentions as an opinion of some that Homer did 
not leave his poems in writing. Second, the non- 
existence of prose authors before Cadmus the 
Milesian and Pherecydes of Scyros, 544 B.C., and 
of any note before Hecatseus of Miletus and Phe- 
recydes of Athens, about 500 B.C. Third, the 
non-existence of written laws before those of 
Draco, three hundred and fifty years after Homer, 
fourth, the non-existence of written contracts- 
Fifth, the non-mention of writing in Homer. 

16. Answers to these arguments ? First, Jose- 
phus wrote as late as the first century of the 
Christian sera ; he speaks very undecidedly ; and 
his authority cannot be admitted, for his assertion 
is contained in the midst of a laboured attempt to 
throw discredit on the early history of Greece, and 

- 



TREATISE OX HOMER. 7 

to eulogise his own country, where the knowledge 
of letters had existed at a much' earlier period. 
Second, it is supposed that' until writing is common 
in a nation, all compositions will be in verse, be- 
cause verse alone can be borne in memory ; but 
the moment that paper, or parchment, or a 
smoothed hide is to be had, (if the art of carving 
wood, stone, or lead, were known in Homers time, 
it would not serve the purpose,) the chronicler in 
prose comes forward. Now, admitting the priority 
of verse composition, how does it follow that the 
pre-eminence thus attained would be immediately 
relinquished, as soon as the way was opened for the 
introduction of prose ? Is it not more probable 
that the species of composition, by which their pre- 
decessors had sealed their immortality, would 
induce others also, for a time at least, to follow in 
the same path ? And accordingly Strabo affirms 
that the first prose writings were poetry in every 
thing but the want of measure. The book of Job 
is a parallel case ; it is a poem of high merit, com- 
posed above two thousand years A.O., whereas the 
earliest prose composition we have is the Penta- 
teuch, B.C. 1570 ; and ; alphabetical writing was 
known to the Israelites long before the time of 
Moses, as he frequently speaks of it in terms which 
plainly prove it to have been in common use — 
Numb. v. 23, Deut. xxiv. 1. Third, though the 
code of Draco is the first that can be affirmed to 
have been written in Greece with historical cer- 
tainty, there is a passage in Euripides (Hec. 854) 
from which it may be inferred that laws were 
written at the time of the Trojan war ; and So- 
phocles more distinctly says they existed at the time 
of Oedipus (Ant. 454) ; besides, the absence of a 
written legislation does not argue much against the 
knowledge of writing in general for the ordinary 
purposes of fife. Fourth, as to the objection that 



8 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

treaties were verbal, and, therefore, accompanied 
by sacrifices and appeals to heaven, in order to 
ensure their performance, a similar custom pre- 
vailed in the patriarchal age, and among the Jews 
to a very late period ; for instance, Abraham's 
contract with Ephraim. Nor does it appear that 
written contracts were resorted to (except the bill 
of divorce, Deut. xxiv. 8) until the time of Jere- 
miah, who speaks of one upon the purchase of a 
field (Jer. xxxii. 6.) The Romans also made their 
contracts before witnesses in the forum, called sti- 
pulatio. Besides, the formality of written docu- 
ments was not likely to occupy the attention of 
warriors, who had spent their lives in the service of 
arms. Fifth, Homer in two passages may allude 
to alphabetical writing ; the one is in II. Z. 168 — 
the tr/jjuara Xvypa was more probably alphabetical 
than symbolical writing, for symbols could scarcely 
convey a message of so peculiar a nature as Prsetus 
wished to convey to Jobates about Bellerophon ; 
the words are as applicable to one species of writing 
as the other, and their application to alphabetical 
writing is confirmed by a passage in Ovid — " Ite 
hinc, difficiles, funebria signal tabellse : the other 
passage is, II. H. 175, 6t Be ickripov Iffrj/xr/vavro 

etCCUTTOQ. n ^ ew _ , — ^ 

17. Arguments for the use of writing in Homer's 
age I First, the two passages above mentioned. 
Second, Sophocles, Trach. 157, mentions a BiXrov 
iyy Eypaju/uitvrjv, or written will of Hercules. Uuri- 
jpides, Hippol. 861. 881, speaks of an liri(jToXrj or 
StArocr written by Phsedra to Theseus, eighty years 
before the Trojan war. ( Virgil also speaks of the 
Sibyl writing on leaves in the time of ./Eneas, 
iEneid 3. 443 and 6. 74, and of iEneas writing on 
a shield, JEn. 3. 286, " i£neas hsec de Danais vic- 
toribus arma.") And although ypa<f>w originally 
signified to carve, yet even Wolf allows that 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 9 

iEschylus and Pindar used it in the sense of 
" write, 11 and therefore Sophocles and Euripides. 
Agamemnon also sends a letter to Clytsemnestra, 
in the opening of the Iphigenia of Euripides. 
Thirp!, Cadmus introduced literal characters into 
Greece about 1045 B.C., about two hundred years 
before Homer, and from the great utility of writing 
every exertion would be made to counterbalance 
the difficulties and impediments to its reception 
and improvement. Fourth, Homer was acquainted 
with the Sidonian artisans, and there was a long 
* and close alliance between the Sidonians and 
Jews. The Jews (Isaiah xxxiv. 4, Jer. xxxvi. 2) 
wrote on parchment, the best of which was made 
at Pergamus, sixty miles from Smyrna ; it is, 
therefore, probable that Homer was acquainted 
with the article, and the use the Jews made of it. 
Fifth, Heyne allows (though Wolf does not) the 
existence of written copies of the component parts 
of the Iliad in Ionia, long before the time of the 
Pisistratidse, though he maintains, with greater 
inconsistency, the distinct authorship of those parts. 
•Sixth, the word " confusos 11 in the passage of 
Cicero, in which he says, that " Pisistratus primus 
Homeri libros, confusos antea, sic disposuisse, ut 
nunc habemus, 11 distinctly refers to a prior connec- 
tion and orderly arrangement. Seventh, and when 
Hipparchus is said, raOfiripou KOjut?«v, to carry the 
works of Homer to Athens, the verb ko/u'$o> applies 
to the conveyance only of things real and material, 
and consequently to the works of Homer in an 
embodied form or volume. 

18. Instances of feats of memory performed by 
others ? In the early ages of society, while the 
mind was unfettered by variety of occupation, the 
memory would be rendered, by cultivation, reten- 
tive to a very high degree ; and if Xenophon 
asserts that in his time geyeral persons could recite 

b3 



10 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

the Iliad and Odyssey throughout, and this when 
copies were multiplied through Greece, still more 
would it be the case, when the absence of every 
other means for their preservation rendered it 
absolutely necessary. Merian brings up the Italian 
Improvisatori and Tasso, who composed four hun- 
dred stanzas or three thousand two hundred verses 
of his Jerusalem without writing them down. 
Cesarotti speaks of Macpherson's Ossian ; and we 
are told that Silvio Pellico and Maroncelli com- 
posed many thousand verses in their confinement. 
The Calmuck singers, also, are said to retain 
an memory and recite the Dschangariade, an epic 
poem of the Calmucks nearly equal in length to the 
Iliad. 

19. Objections to those instances ? With regard 
to those mentioned by Xenophon, the point in 
question is not whether thirty thousand lines may 
not be learned by heart from print or manuscript, 
but whether one man can originally compose a 
poem, considered to be a perfect model of symmetry 
and consistency of parts, without the aid of writing 
materials. The Improvisatori, with a thousand 
common places in their heads, and with a language 
one half of which rhymes to the other, may easily 
pour forth verses, as they are called, to any extent ; 
the same can be done in English. There is no autho- 
rity for the story about Tasso ; and if there were, 
it is known that he had for many years arranged the 
plan of his poem, and these four hundred stanzas 
would be, at most, but the filling up of a picture, 
the outline of which had been already fixed. 
Ossian is now generally allowed to be a modern 
production. The verses of Pellico and Maroncelli 
should be seen and compared with the Homeric 
poems before their example can be allowed to be a 
pertinent one. 

20. The second hypothesis with respect to the 



TBEATTBE ON HOMEB. 11 

origin of the Homeric poems, viz. " that the 
general plan and outlines of the epic arguments 
were traced by one author, but subsequently filled 
up by the introduction of various parts," is not 
tenable, for it implies either that the author 
conceived the plan of a poem far beyond the 
powers and attainments of his age, or that his 
simple metrical narrative was afterwards, by the 
efforts of a succession of authors, expanded into 
the noble poenr which we possess ; but there are 
no grounds for entertaining so paradoxical an opi- 
nion, nor is it consistent with the belief of antiquity 
that the verses of the Iliad were recited in separate 
rhapsodies. 

21. Arguments in favor of the third hypothesis, 
viz. the Woifian. First, under this head may be 
reckoned the objections against the popular opi- 
nion, together with the arguments in its favor, 
which have been already considered ; besides, 
second, this hypothesis accords with the old tradi- 
tion, that the poem was composed of rhapsodies, 
originally recited separately; the citations which are 
found in Herodotus, Plato, Strabo, Dionysius Hali- 
carnassus, Athenseus, &c. sufficiently attest this tra- 
dition ; thus our fifth book of the Iliad is quoted as 
Aiopridovg apiorsia, the eleventh as ^Ajapi/utvovog 
apiaTua, the twenty-fourth as "EKTOpog Xvrpa, or 
simply \vrpa ; these citations, also, do not always 
agree with the present arrangement, as they some- 
times include more than forms one of our books ; 
the legend of the intrigue of Mars and Venus, 
recited by Demodocus to the lyre in the eighth 
book, and the Necyomanteia in the eleventh book 
of the Odyssey ; the Doloneia, or rencounter of 
of Ulysses and Diomede with Dolon, in the tenth 
book of the Iliad ; the Atrcu, or embassy to 
Achilles ; the 'Aywy tTrtracjyiog, or funeral games ; 
the 'QirXoiroua, or the arms of Achilles ; the 



12 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

NiVr/oa, or Eury cleans washing the feet of Ulysses ; 
the Mv»)OT*7po<£owa, or slaughter of the suitors ; 
the ra kv IlvX^, or ra iv AaiceSaifiovi, the visits of 
Telemachus to Nestor and Menelaus ; are instances 
of those rhapsodies which were separately recited. 
Third, this hypothesis agrees also with the descrip- 
tion of Phemius and Demodocus in the Odyssey. 
Fourth, it is confirmed by the uniform practice of 
the human mind, which, proceeding from particu- 
lars, reduces those that are similar into one whole, 
and gradually advances from humble beginnings 
towards perfection. 

22. Objections against the Woman theory ? 
First, it is a speculation which opposes a belief 
venerable even for its antiquity, and which could 
not have been so universally prevalent if it were 
not in some degree well founded, although we can- 
not at present discover the grounds on which it 
rested. Second, it is much easier to advance 
objections to the received opinion, than to confirm 
or prove it. Third, so far from diminishing, it 
adds to the difficulties of the Homeric question, 
for we have now to account not for one, but for 
several Homers in so early an age. Fourth, it is 
improbable that a number of individuals should 
chance to compose verses so connected as to form 
so perfect a poem. Fifth, even were this the case, 
the uniformity of language and sentiment, and the 
strict preservation of character, are unaccountable. 

23. How does Heyne answer the last objection ? 
He says there is an analogous similarity in the 
fragments of the epic poets which remain, arising, 
perhaps, from their use of Ionic, the character of 
their subjects, and their custom of recitation ; and 
it is not accurately true that there is such a strict 
uniformity through all the parts of the Iliad. 

24. The conclusion to which Trollope comes on 
this subject ? That the Iliad and Odyssey are the 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 13 

production of one mind ; that they were originally 
committed to writing by Homer himself, (though 
not in the same character as we now have them in) ; 
that the confusion in which they were afterwards 
involved arose from the unconnected manner of 
reciting them in European Greece ; that this con- 
fusion did not extend to the written copies dis- 
persed through Ionia ; that they were again re- 
duced to their original form, and the order in 
which they now are, by Pisistratus ; that the 
arrangement of Pisistratus was confirmed or 
amended by comparing it with a manuscript copy 
of the two poems, which had been obtained for 
that purpose from Ionia by Hipparchus. 



PRESERVATION AND IMPROVEMENT. 

25. How were the Homeric poems preserved I 
By the rhapsodes. 

26. There are three races of rhapsodes ? First, 
the aotSbt, who sung their own verses, (as Phemius 
and Demodocus.) Homer seems to have been one 
of these. Second, the f Pcn£a>So(, who recited the 
poems of others, and were so far poets themselves 
as not to scruple to alter, omit, or add to their 
originals ; the most celebrated of these were the 
Homeridse of Chios, to one of whom, Cynsethus, 
the hymn to Apollo was attributed, and from the 
line Tv(j>\6g avrjp, oiku £e Xu$ lv\ TranraXoiarry, it 
must have been the production of a Chian rhap- 
sode. This race extended to the time of the 
Pisistratidse, and for some time after, until copies 
of Homer became common in Greece. Third, the 
third race existed between the year B.C. 430 and 
the age of the Alexandrian critics ; they were 
mere reciters, and composed none, and in conse- 



14 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

quence of the formation of a regular theatre, and 
the exhibition of regular dramas, were held in no 
estimation, and were acceptable only to the lowest 
people. 

27. Derivation of r Pcrt//a>Soi ? 'Pairrwv liriwv 
ootSot, because they joined together their own or 
others' short poems, and fitted them for connected 
recitation ; the derivation from the pafiSbg, or 
wand, which they carried iik their hands whilst 
reciting, is not approved of. 

28. The following cyclic poets, who lived between 
Homer and Pisistratus, seem to have been rhap- 
sodes of the second class : — Arctinus, author of the 
^Etkiopis, in which were related the exploits of 
Memnon at Troy, after the death of Hector. 
JLesches, author of the little Iliad, which contained 
the history of the siege, from the death of Achilles 
to the capture of the city ; in this, Neoptolemus is 
represented as carrying away iEneas prisoner in 
his ship, whereas in the twentieth Iliad he is de- 
scribed, prophetically, as reigning at Troy — 

Nuv St S17 Alvziao f5irj Tpwivatv ava^et, 
Kcu irmStQ iraidwv. toi ksv fieroTTiarOs yivwvrai. 
Stasinus, author of the Cyprian verses, which com- 
prised a series of events, in eleven books, from the 
marriage of Peleus and Thetis to the opening of 
the Iliad ; he relates that the birth of Helen was 
resolved on in a great council of the gods, who 
knew that she would occasion a destructive war 
between Europe and Asia, "but considered it neces- 
sary to quiet the complaints of the earth, on 
account of the superabundant population. Augias, 
author of the Noorof, or returns of the Grecian 
chiefs from Troy. Pisander, author of the Hera- 
cleid, to whom the Alexandrians assigned the first 
rank among heroic poets after Homer and Hesiod. 
Subsequently to these, the names of Archilochus, 
Terpander, Alcman, Alcams, and Sajipho, are con- 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 15 

spicuous ; and in the times of the Pisistratidae, 
jStesichorus, Ibycus, Tyrtazus, Anacreon, and Simo- 
nides. 

29. Cause of so many productions being attri- 
buted to Homer, of which he was not the author I 
His great reputation induced the bards of the day, 
and the Ionian rhapsodists particularly, through 
hope of gain and the improbability of detection, to 
pass off their own compositions under the sanction 
of so great a name ; with the view, perhaps, of facili- 
tating these impositions, they assumed the name of 
ffomeridw, representing themselves as the descend- 
ants of Homer. 

30. Name the other productions attributed to 
Homer? The Margites, a satire, (containing 
Iambic lines, of which only three are extant,) 
which Callimachus admired, and Zeno considered 
to be Homer's first production, but others attri- 
buted it to Pigres ; the Batrachomyomachia, a juve- 
nile production of Homer, by some also attributed 
to Pigres, who was brother to Artemisia of Hali- 
carnassus, who commanded in the Persian fleet 
under Xerxes ; the hymns, including the hymn to 
Ceres, and the fragment to Bacchus, discovered in 
the last century at Moscow, thirty-three in number^ 
but with the exception of those to Apollo, Venus, 
Mercur^, and Ceres, so short as to consist of only 
about three hundred and fifty lines in all. Herman 
alone, of modern critics, contends that they are 
Homers ; the Scholiast assigns them to Cynaethus. 
That to Venus seems the most ancient. They 
are more recent than the Iliad, as appears from 
several internal marks ; for instance, the word 
rvxn, which is found in the hymn to Minerva, does 
not occur in the Iliad or Odyssey. Several epi- 
grams are attributed to Homer in the life by Hero- 
dotus ; also lines from his contest with Hesiocl. In 
that work there is also mention of his Phocms^ 



16 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

Eiresione, and some of his Gnomce. Suidas speaks 
of his Epithalamia, Amazonia, Cyclus, Geranoma- 
chia, Arachnomachia, and Psaromachia. Hero- 
dotus also mentions the Epigoni, on the subject of 
the second Theban war. We have also an account 
of the Cecropes; the capture of Oechalia by Hercules; 
the A*£ f E7TTa7rficr6c, a humourous poem in Iambic 
verse ; the Epiciclides, and the Thebais, in seven 
books, considered by Pausanias inferior only to the 
Iliad and Odyssey ; Capra ; Ilias minor, fyc. and 
the other works of the cyclic poets mentioned in 
art. 28. 

31. The first who introduced the Homeric poems 
into Western Greece I Lvcurgus, on the authority 
of Heraclides Ponticus, \vriosays he procured them 
from the descendants of Oreophylus, who had been 
Homer's host in Samos, and to whom is attributed 
by some the Ot^aXtac aXioaig, the plan of the work 
being given him by Homer; probably these de- 
scendants of Oreophylus were the aoido), paxfstjjSol 
above mentioned. (Elian says he brought them in 
a mass into Greece, and Plutarch says (adding, as 
usual, to the story) that he wrote them out in Asia 
and brought them into Greece, to assist in esta- 
blishing the form of government and laws which he 
introduced. 

32. To whom is the next improvement in the 
Homeric poems attributed \ To 'Solon, who first 
effected a patyr) or lipfiog — i. e. an arrangement of 
the rhapsodies in something of an epic order — and 
introduced a continuous recitation of them, instead 
of that desultory and unconnected one which had 
formerly been in use. The great merit attributed 
to Solon for this proves that he and the rhapsodes 
had no common written copy of the poems. 

33. The views of Solon in introducing the 
Homeric poems into Greece were patriotic or 
political, and legislative. First, foreseeing the 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 



17 



danger arising to his country from the subjugation 
of the Grecian Colonies in Asia Minor to the 
Lydian power, and its proximity to and probable 
reduction by the Persian monarchy, he at the 
court of Croesus, the actual theatre of the danger 
impending, planned the fittest means of arresting 
its progress, and this he conceived to be the intro- 
duction of the Homeric Poems, a masculine and 
martial body of literature, presenting to the view 
of the Grecian youth, the congregated array of 
their fellow-countrymen, bursting on and conquer- 
ing the dominions of an Asiatic prince, impelled 
by a sense of wrong sustained, and animated with 
undaunted resolution in the assertion of their 
rights ; thus a feeling of pride, a consciousness of 
hereditary superiority, and a recollection of former 
injuries were excited in their minds. The passage 
in the third book of the Iliad, in Agamemnon's 
speech, in which he speaks of the Tifii], or indemni- 
fication, which should demonstrate to after ages 
the principle on which the war was conducted, and 
the tenacity with which the point of honour was 
adhered to, is one of many which confirm this idea. 
Consistently with this idea, also ^Eschylus, a par- 
ticipator in those glorious scenes, in his Agamem- 
non, giving in his first chorus an account of the 
preparations of the Atreidse for their expedition, 
calls him who had sustained the immediate injury 
in his feelings, (for it was an affair of honour or 
principle), an avTiStnog, a legal adversary, & plain- 
tiff, seeking the redress of his wrongs from the 
only competent tribunal of those times. The pro- 
bability of this opinion is much enhanced by the 
consideration, that the most effectual resistance to 
the Persian arms was given by that state and on 
that ground where the Homeric poetry was chiefly 
cultivated. Second, the Homeric poems must also 
have materially aided Solon's legislative views ; 



18 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

the form of government in Homer was monarchical, 
but very limited, and in this respect was similar to 
that of Athens, where the principal men had much 
power ; the j3ovA?7, or council of chiefs, where 
subjects were discussed, before they were laid 
before the people, was analogous to the senate of 
four hundred, as the ayoprj, or assembly of soldiers, 
corresponded with the popular assembly in Athens, 
for there also subjects must be discussed in the 
senate before they were proposed to the people ; 
the chiefs presided in the Iliad at the military 
tribunals, each in his respective quarter of the 
camp, as at Athens the magistrates were elected 
from the more opulent classes. 

34. The effect of Solon's labours on Homer on 
the literature of his country % They gave an impulse 
to the intellectual tastes of the Athenians, and 
through them, to those of the rest of Greece, and 
thus were the precursor of that astonishing de- 
velopment of the powers of mind, which took 
place during that period, which was graced by the 
names of iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, in 
tragedy ; of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Zeno- 
phon, in history ; of Plato, in philosophy ; and of 
Demosthenes in eloquence. 

35. A cloud of authorities testify that the first 
construction, or re-construction, or complete edition 
of the Iliad and Odyssey is due to Pisistratus. 
Cicero — (disposuisse sic ut nunc habemus libros 
antea confusos dicitur Pisistratus.) Pausanias, 
(riOpoi&To ;) Josephus, (avvTiQr\vai ;) (Elicm, 
(a7T£<£i7V£ ;) Lihanius, (avWoyrj ;) Suidas, (ovvtriBri 
Kai av vera. x^tO Eustathius, (ol <Tvv6(fiEvoi^ under 
Pisistratus.) Leo Allatius quotes an epigram, in- 
scribed on a statue of Pisistratus, containing those 
words, og Tov'Ojurj/ooi/ rfOpoicra. 

36. The poets who assisted Pisistratus in com- 
piling the Homeric poems ? Orpheus of Orotona, 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 19 

(author of the Argonautics), Onomacritus, Simoni- 
lies, and Anacreon, 

37. In the dialogue called Hipparchus, attributed 
to Plato, Hipparchus is said (to. 'Oprjpov irpwrog 
KOfuaai- tig rrjv jr\v ravrrjvi), to have compelled the 
Rhapsodes to recite them in order at the Pana- 
thenaic festival every fifth year, hence we may 
conclude that the collection and arrangement of 
the poems were commenced by Solon, chiefly exe- 
cuted by Pisistratus, and completed by his son 
Hipparchus ; this period will embrace about eighty 
years from the date of Solon's law, B.C. 594, to 
the death of Hipparchus, B.C. 513. 

38. The Pisistratidse, as they first committed the 
Homeric poems to writing, must have improved the 
text, altered the orthography, and adapted the 
language of the Homeric poems to the style and 
taste of their own age. 

39. Though this was perhaps necessary, yet some 
evils have attended it; the principal one is, the 
virtual loss of the ancient language, by the refine- 
ment of its orthography, and frequently of its 
philological character ; had not this been the case, 
we should have been spared much that is conjec- 
tural in grammatical criticism, much that reposes 
©n the basis merely of a fanciful analogy, and many 
speculations on the radical forms and inflexions of 
the language ; the Homeric language would have 
been, what it is now but partially, a connecting 
link between the classical dialect of Athens, and 
the primitive speech of Ionia ; the laws of Home- 
ric versification would have been amply elucidated 
by the existence of a settled standard of ortho- 
graphy, and we should not have had so many 
discussions about the duplication of consonants ; 
the digamma, (supported by Bentley), and the 
metrical ictus (by Dunbar.) 

40. The process of re-uniting the scattered mate- 



20 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

rials of the Homeric poems, led to a more accurate 
conception of the legitimate epopoeia, and produced 
that element of composition, viz. unity, which 
eminently characterizes the Greek classics ; to this 
we are to trace the admirable simplicity of argu- 
ment and construction which pervades the writings 
of the dramatic authors, the close adherence to 
their subject of the orators, and the epic style of 
the historians. Herodotus is termed the Homer of 
history, and the production of Thucydides has been 
termed an historical epopceia. 

41. Meaning of the terms SiaaKtvagTrig, BtopOwrrjg, 
KpirtKog, ypa/ut/uLaTitTTrig, ypap^aTiKog ? The Siaa- 
Ktvaarria, recasted the original work, and improved 
it by changes, additions, omissions, and more elabo- 
rate polishing ; (many passages of Homer are 
condemned by the critics, as interpolations of the 
diasceuasts ;) there is a fable of a septuagint of 
diasceuasts set in motion by Pisistratus, in whose 
time they existed. The $iop6u)Trig of the Alexan- 
drian school corresponded to the critical editor of 
our own times. The KpiTiKog inquired into the 
genuineness of the text, assigned to each ancient 
author what properly belonged to him, and pro- 
nounced to the audience in the school what parts 
were, and what were not agreeable to the fixed 
laws of just composition ; (this Kpiatg tCjv Xoywv, 
or judgment of literary works, Longinus declares 
to be the last result from much experience, 7roAAf)e 
TTEtpag TiXtvratov £7riyivvr}fxa). The ypapfiaTLGTrig 
divided works into convenient parts, drew up sum- 
maries or arguments, compared manuscripts, re- 
moved clerical errors, and corrected the punctuation 
and accentual marks. The ypa/m/jiaTiKbg was the 
interpreter of the meaning of words and sentences, 
the commentator, as we should call him. 

42. The text remained very unsettled for ages 
after Pisistratus ; thus the words Tpwevcri $e icfiSi 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 21 

tyfj7rra/, second book of Iliad, fifteenth verse, were 
inserted after the time of Plato and Aristotle, who 
read instead, SlSo/uev Sc ol *v)(oq aptaOai, by which 
words Jupiter was rendered guilty of falsehood. 
From the story of Alcibiades and the schoolmaster 
it appears, that written copies of at least parts of 
the Iliad (j3tj3Aeov 'O/utj/hkoi;) were common in 
schools in the age of the Peloponnesian war. 

43. The recital of the Homeric poems at the 
Panathenaean festival, by incorporating them with 
the religious ordinances of the state, gave them a 
character of sanctity most favourable to their 
influence on taste, as well as to the preservation of 
their integrity. 

44. The prize for the best recital of the Home- 
ric poems was a lamb ; hence, the name apvu>$ol 
was given to those who competed at these con- 
tests. 

45. The critical science commenced with the 
existence of manuscripts ; the first mode of inter- 
pretation was that styled irpayfiaTiKYt — viz. an 
endeavour by the philosophers to deprive the Ho- 
meric poems of their injurious tendency to physical 
and moral science, by accommodating tl^gm to the 
conce pt ions 0/ thejr age, ami tracing in their nar- 
ratives the outlines of the most recondite doctrines. 

46. Other philosophers denounced them as im- 
pious, and unworthy of admission into any well- 
constituted state, as Pythagoras, Xenophanes, 
Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plato. 

47. Why Plato rejected Homer and the tragic 
poets, his imitators, from his republic ? He con- 
sidered poetry, especially dramatic, as in the class 
of piprjoug, ; he considered fitfjirjaeig as fleeting and 
unstable, (stability and truth being conceded by 
him to ideas only ;) and hence poetry, as vain and 
contemptible, and an erring guide of life. 

48. The irpayfjLaTiKrj was followed by the allege- 



22 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

rical interpretation, which consisted in suggesting 
and resolving difficulties in the theology, morals, 
manners, or philosophy of the poet ; this mode was 
adopted by the Stoics, particularly by Prodicus, 
Protagoras, and Hippias, the Elean, whose 7r/oo|3A?)- 
fiara, ^Tjrrj/iara, airopiai, and \vaeig, led the way 
to technical criticism. These critics introduced 
several interpolations, which are proved to be such 
by, first, palpable violations of the Homeric metre ; 
second, by peculiarities of construction unknown 
to the poet's age ; third, by unobservance of his 
orthography ; fourth, by allusions to Mythi, which 
were originated by subsequent authors. 

49. The fruits of the labours of the school of 
criticism prior to Zenodotus, reached the Alexan- 
drians in eight copies, or SiopQivoeig, viz. that of 
Antimachus, of Colophon, contemporary with Soc- 
rates, the first after the Pisistratidse, who prepared 
a complete copy of the Homeric poems ; and that 
of Aristotle, revised by Alexander and Callisthenes, 
and called r) etc tov vapOr)Kog ; these two were called 
at kclt avdpa, the other six were called at 7roAmjcat, 
or at Kara iroXeig, or al Ik 7t6Xeu)v, and were the 
Marseilles, the Chian, Argive, Sinopic, Cyprian, 
and Cretan copies ; the origin of those titles was 
probably this, that they were thus entered in the 
catalogues of the library of Alexandria. 

50. Siopfii/jcriQ signifies a recension ; TrapaSomg, 
the text ; eKdoaig, an edition ; 7) irpoeicBoaig, that 
of Aristarchus published in his lifetime; 7) tTTetcdoaig? 
that after his death. 

51. The face of Greek literature and politics 
gradually changed after the Macedonian supre- 
macy ; Alexandria, the seat of government, became 
the resort of learned men. Libraries and museums 
succeeded to theatres, forums, and festivals ; the 
spirit of liberty departed ; the independent efforts 
of genius, drawing from its own resources, ceased, 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 23 

and the age of criticism, the offspring of intellectual 
decay, commenced ; not even the inventive genius 
of Theocritus, as displayed in his Idylls, rescued 
this age from the reproach of numbering amongst 
its events, the decline of the higher orders of lite- 
rature. 

52. The four great critics on Homer, were Zeno- 
dotus, Aristophanes, Aristarchus, and Crates. 

53. Zenodotus of Ephesus, pupil of Philetas, 
lived at Alexandria, under Ptolemy the second, 
Philadelphus, about B.C. 284, his merits as an 
editor of Homer have been handed down in a very <k® 
conflicting manner ; he seems to have taken very 
great liberties with the text, not only branding, 

but omitting a number of passages now amongst 
the most admirable of the poems ; this may have 
arisen from the varieties of different copies, which 
he had collected, and the many conflicting texts 
they contained. The charges of levity and trifling 
brought against him, are rather to be attributed 
to the low state of philological knowledge of his 
age, than to any deficiency of judgment in himself. 
The Zenodotean recension exhibiting not merely 
the fruits of his own researches, but the aggregate 
of those of the SiopBwTal who preceded him, are 
valuable as giving us a representation of the more 
ancient form of the Homeric text. 

54. Aristophanes of Byzantium, pupil of Zeno- 
dotus, lived in the reigns of Ptolemy the Fourth, 
Philopater, and Ptolemy the Fifth, Epiphanes ; 
he invented the accentual marks, and also those of 
punctuation, or r oyo t and ariyiiai ; he was the 
first to investigate the gra nunat ical principles, and 
to trace the anajggies of his language ; he directed 
his attention to the genuineness of the old poetry, 
and was the first to brand as spurious the con- 
clusion of the Odyssey from verse 297 of 23rd book, 
and also the Hesiodic shield of Hercules ; he com- 



24 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

mentod on Hesiod, Alcseus, Plato, Pindar, Sopho- 
cles, Euripides, Aristophanes, &c. He took less 
liberty than Zenodotus in omitting verses, but 
letting them stand, he marked such as he thought 
spurious ; such verses were rjOtTnfiivot, the brand- 
ing itself an ader^atg. To Aristophanes, the cele- 
brated AWq.n ririgi.n ranon, or classification of the 
Greek writers, is also due ; he was the preceptor 
of Aristarchus. 

55. Aristarchus, prince of critics, a native of 
Samothrace, flourished in the reign of Ptolemy the 
Sixth, Philometor, B.C. 180, to whose children he 
was preceptor ; in the latter part of his life was 
banished to Cyprus by the cruel Euergetes the 
Second ; his sayings were regarded as oracular by 
succeeding critics, his name became proverbial, 
" net Aristarchus, 11 Hor. He composed upwards 
of eight hundred critical commentaries, and illus- 
trated Homer, Anacreon, iEschylus, Sophocles, 
Ion, Pindar, Aristophanes, &c. ; being asked why 
he did not compose a poem on the true principles 
of criticism, he modestly replied, " he could not 
write as he would, nor would he write as he could." 
Two editions by Aristarchus, i) 7rpo£KcWf c, (in which 
|bhe Iliad and Odyssey were for the first time divi- 
ned into twenty-four books, denominated by the 
letters of the alphabet,) and ?j tTriiiSoaig, a posthu- 
mous edition ; he was more moderate than Zeno- 
dotus in expunging passages ; those he considered 
suspicious he marked with an obelus (•(-) or spit, 
hence the term 6j5t\i^ttv, to obelize, to condemn, 
is derived ; his TrapaSoaig or text finally prevailed 
as Homer among the ancients, especially the Ro- 
mans ; the greater part of the Scholia are compiled 
from his critical annotations ; they may be seen in 
the Venetian Scholia, by Villoison ; he opposed 
the allegorical system of interpretation of the 
Stoics, which was defended by Crates ; he erred 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 25 

(as the others) in accommodating his critical re- 
search to a false standard; viz. his own idea of 
perfection, or of what was worthy of Homer, (and 
to this he and they were led by that taste for a 
priori investigation which prevailed in the schools 
of the philosophers,) rather than to a judicious 
comparison of existing materials. 

56. Crates of Malles, opponent of Aristarchus, 
opened a school of criticism at Pergamus, under 
Attains II., by whom he w r as sent on an embassy 
to Rome, B.C. 1£7. He was the first introducer 
of the Greek language and literature into Home ; 
he embraced all the physical interpretations of the 
old Stoics ; which would make Homer not only the 
best poem, but also the best treatise on astronomy, 
medicine, geography, &c. &c. 

57. The Alexandrian critics did not take liber- 
ties with the text of those poets who committed 
their works to writing, but only with the remains 
of the old aotSo), or minstrel bards. 

58. In the third or fourth century after the 
Christian sera, another recension of the Homeric 
text took place, when the edition of Aristarchus 
was corrected according to the subsequent autho- 
rities, and it is from this edition that all the MSS. 
of original authority are supposed to be derived. 



CHAPTER II. 

VICO. THIRD BOOK OF HIS SCIENZA NUOVA. 

Chapter 1. On the philosophic meaning attributed 
to Homer. 

1. Plato, followed by Plutarch, pretends that 
Homer possessed all the recondite knowledge of a 
civilized age. 

2. Arguments against this opinion. Granting 
that Homer must have followed the common feel- 
ings and manners of his yet barbarous contempo- 
raries ; and, therefore, passing over the fact of his 
representing force as the measure of the greatness 
of the gods, (viz. Jupiter's chain) ; the incidents 
of Diomede wounding Venus and Mars, and Mi- 
nerva rifling Venus, and hurling a stone at Mars ; 
the use of poisoned arrows, as is proved by Ulysses 
going to Ephyre to find poisonous herbs for the 
purpose, (though there is no instance in the Iliad 
or Odyssey of a wound caused by a poisoned 
arrow,) and the custom of not burying the 
bodies of their enemies slain in battle ; yet, first, 
it was not the part of a wise man to inspire admi- 
ration for feelings and customs so barbarous, and 
amuse a coarse nation with the coarseness of its 
gods and heroes. Thus, Mars calls Minerva kuvo- 
fivia, dog-fly ; Minerva gives Diana a blow with 
her fist ; Achilles and Agamemnon call each other 
" dog."" Second, a philosopher would not represent 
Agamemnon so unwise as to allow the Greeks to 
perish rather than restore Chryseis, or so unjust as 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 2 J 

to deprive Achilles of Briseis ; his most sublime 
characters are inconsistent with a civilized age, 
though being appropriate to the savage and 
heroic. Third, a philosopher would not represent 
his heroes as addicted to wine. Fourth, his simi- 
lies, though incomparable in themselves, yet being 
taken from the savage images of a savage nature, 
do not indicate a spirit softened by philosophy. 
Fifth, a philosopher would not so indulge in bloody 
details of wounds. Sixth, would not represent his 
heroes of such fickle tempers, passing suddenly 
from sorrow to joy, as Ulysses at the feast of 
Alcinous ; or irritated at a single expression, as 
Achilles with Priam. Seventh, a philosopher would 
not devise the old woman's tales with which the 
Odyssey is full. 



Chapter 2. On the Country of Homer. 

A remarkable passage proves that the author 
of the Odyssey was born in the south-western 
parts of Greece. Alcinous, king of Oorcyra, ob- 
serves to Ulysses, that his people were so skilful in 
naval affairs, that they could conduct him even to 
Euboea if necessary ; looking on Euboea (which is 
very near Troy), as the ultima thule of the Greek 
world : each state claimed him, because it recog- 
nised in his Poems, its own language, phrases, 
dialects, &c. 



Chapter 3. On the Age of Homer. 

1. Vico places Homer about four centuries and a 
half after the Trojan war, making him contempo- 

c2 



28 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

rary with Numa ; to this conclusion he is led from 
the following circumstances, chiefly taken from the 
Odyssey : — 

First, at the funeral of Patroclus, Achilles 
celebrates almost all the games in subsequent use 
at Olympia in the most refined period. Second, 
the arts of casting in low relief, and of engraving 
on metals had been invented, (as appears from the 
shield of Achilles), but painting is not mentioned 
either by Homer or Moses ; the stained vessels 
and dyed caparison of the Oarian woman (Iliad 4. 
141.) probably led the way to it. Third, the deli- 
cious gardens of Alcinous, and the sumptuousness 
of his table and palace. Fourth, the Phoenicians 
had already introduced ivory, purple, incense from 
Arabia ; byssus or fine linen, and rich robes, as 
the mantle presented to Penelope by her suitors. 
Fifth, the carriage in which Priam goes to Achilles 
is made of cedar, and the grotto of Calypso is 
fragrant with it. Sixth, the voluptuous baths of 
Circe. Seventh, the young slaves of the suitors, 
described as beautiful, graceful, and fairhaired. 
Eighth, men dress their hair as carefully as wo- 
men. Ninth, the Homeric heroes eat nothing but 
roast meat, on brasiers, afterwards spits were in- 
vented ; thus Achilles roasts the lamb for Priam, 
(for the feast was a sacrifice, at which the hero 
officiated as priest), and Agamemnon slays the two 
lambs, whose blood was to sanction the treaty. 
Afterwards boiled meat came into use, it requiring, 
besides fire, water, a caldron and a tripod, (which 
two articles, however, are common in the Iliad.) 
Virgil gives his heroes boiled meat, and uses spits 
for roasting ; the most delicate morsel mentioned, 
is a cake made of flour, cheese, and honey ; in two 
of his similes he mentions fish. Tenth, Homer 
seems to have lived in an age when the strict 
heroic or feudal right had fallen into disuse in 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 29 

Greece, and popular liberty had begun to appear, 
for his heroes contract marriage with foreign wo- 
men, and bastards succeed to their father's throne. 

2. From his speaking of Egypt, he might be 
placed lower than Numa, for Psammeticus, who 
reigned after Numa, was the first king of Egypt, 
who opened it to the Greeks, unless that Homer 
gained his knowledge of Egypt and other countries 
from the Phenicians. 

3. From the mixture of luxury with the bar- 
barous manners of his heroes in the Iliad, Vico is 
tempted to believe that the two Poems were com- 
posed by several authors during many successive 



Cliapter 4. On the incomparable genius of Homer 
for heroic poetry. 

1. Horace recommends all tragic poets to bor- 
row their characters ready made from Homer, for 
tragedy brings on the stage the hatred, fury, ven- 
geance of heroes, all passions of sublime natures, 
and these passionate pictures were never realized 
with more effect than by and in the Greeks of the 
heroic age, at the end of which Homer came. 
The characters of the new comedy, on the con- 
trary, (for those of the old were living), were all 
conceived by the contemporary poets, who were 
enlightened by the moral maxims of the philoso- 
phers, who had studied the manners of that civi- 
lized age on the Socratic plan. 



Chapter 5. Some Philosophical Observations. 

1. Men being naturally inclined to consecrate 
the memory of the laws and institutions of their 



30 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

own states, history first arose, and then poetry, 
and thus all primary history was poetical : fables 
were in their origin, true narratives; reflection, 
not applied to its natural purposes, becomes the 
mother of fiction ; barbarians have no reflection, 
and therefore the first heroic poets (and even 
among the Romans) celebrated actual events ; thus 
also Dante, in his divine comedy, represented real 
persons and facts. The Greeks and Latins never 
took an imaginary character for the subject of a 
tragedy ; the old comedy brought real characters 
on the stage, as also satire ; the new comedy (when 
the Greeks were more capable of reflection) dealt 
In characters of pure fiction. Longinus says, the 
Iliad is entirely dramatic ; the Odyssey exclusively 
narrative ; the ancient poets possessed memory in 
an extraordinary degree (when there was no 
writing), hence, memory in Latin is synonymous 
with imagination ; thus comminisci is to invent, 
memory recalls the objects, imagination imitates 
and alters their real form, genius, or the faculty of 
invention, throws them into novel groups — thus 
memory is called the mother of the Muses. It is 
impossible to be at once a sublime poet and a 
metaphysician, for metaphysics detach the mind 
from the senses ; the poetic faculty buries it in 
them ; the first rises to the general, the last de- 
scends to the particular. Horace and Aristotle 
say that Homer's characters are inimitable ; the 
indecorums and quaintnesses in Homer were the 
result of the poverty of the language then in use. 
Greek then consisted entirely of images and com- 
parisons ; there were no abstract terms to denote- 
classes of things. 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 31 

Chapter 6. Some Philological Observations 

1. The etymology of paxpySog is appropriate to 
Vico's Homer, who bound together and arranged 
the poetical fables ; the Pisistratidse arranged 
them, before but a confused mass of legends, they 
were expelled a short time before the Tarquins, so 
that from Numa to the Tarquins, a long time, they 
were preserved in the memories of the rhapsodes. 
The variety of the dialects w r as the idiom of the 
different tribes of Greece. Longinus says, that 
Homer composed the Iliad in his youth, that must 
mean in the infancy of Greece, when she would 
admire Achilles, the hero of force, and the Odyssey 
in his old age, that is, in a more advanced pe^ 
riod of Greece ; when she would admire Ulysses, 
the hero of wisdom. The diversity of manners 
is so great in the Iliad and Odyssey, that 
they cannot be referred to the same age, and 
is so striking, that Plato imagines that Homer 
predicted the effeminate and corrupt manners of 
the Odyssey. Tradition says that Homer was 
blind and poor, and (he represents as blind the 
poets who sung at the tables of the great, as at 
the feasts of Alcinous and the suitors of Penelope), 
this was the blindness and poverty of the rhapso- 
des. Several states claimed Homer, because they 
were themselves Homer. The imperfections of 
Homer, as the lowness of the thoughts, grossness 
of the manners, barbarism of the comparisons, 
idioms, poetic licences, discrepancy of dialects, 
making gods men and men gods, correspond to so 
many diversities of character among the Greeks 
themselves. The excellencies of Homer, as his 
eloquence in his savage similes, in his pictures of 
the dying and dead, m his sublime drawing of the 
passions, in his brilliant and picturesque style, 
belong to the heroic age of Greece. It was the 



32 TREATISE OX HOMER. 

genius of that age that made Homer an unrivalled 
poet. In times when the memory, imagination, 
and power of invention were strong, Homer could 
not be a philosopher ; and neither philosophy nor 
criticism which arose subsequently, could ever 
create a poet, who even approached to Homer. 
Hence, Vico concludes, that the Iliad long pre- 
ceded the Odyssey ; that the former was the pro- 
duction of several authors, living in the north-east 
of Greece ; and the latter, of several living in the 
south-west of Greece. On these principles he says, 
Homer is assured of those three immortal titles 
which have been given him, and which cannot 
belong to him on the popular system, viz. — the 
founder of the civilization of Greece, the father of 
all the other poets, and the source of the different 
philosophies of his country. The first cannot, be- 
cause from the epoch of Deucalion and Pyrrha, 
that civilization had been initiated by the institu- 
tion of marriage. The second cannot, because 
before him flourished the theological poets, Or- 
pheus, Amphion, Linus, and Musseus ; and the 
heroic poets, Philammon, Thamyris, Demodocus, 
Epimenides, Aristeas, &c. The third cannot, for 
the philosophers did not find their doctrines in the 
Homeric fables, but grafted them thereon. To 
these three titles may be added, the most ancient 
historian of Paganism ; his poems preserve the 
manners and history of the first ages of Greece ; 
but the lot of the Homeric Poems was similar to 
that of the twelve tables ; they were ascribed to 
one individual, viz. — the Athenian legislator, where- 
as they were but the common law of the heroic 
tribes of Latium, and so the Homeric Poems have 
been ascribed to the rare genius of one individual, 
whereas they were but the common poetry of the 
heroic people of Greece. 



CHAPTER III. 



GREEK ALPHABET, AND MATERIALS FOR WRITING. 

1. According to Herodotus, the Greeks had no 
written forms of letters before the arrival of the 
Phenician Cadmus. 

2. Newton places Cadmus, B.C. 1045 ; the com- 
mon system, B.C. 1493 ; others, as M. Schoell, 
B.C. 1550. 

3. The Phenician alphabet, thus introduced, is 
said to have consisted of eleven consonants and 
four aspirates, A. E. 1. O. to which afterwards T 
was added, having at first the sound of V, as on 
some medals the Ionian colony of Velia in Lucania, 
is written YcAij. The eight letters wanting, were 
the three doubles, the three aspirates, and the two 
long vowels. 

4. The Phenician alphabet, like the Hebrew, 
had no character to express vowel sounds ; A. E. 
I. 0. they used as signs of different breathings, 
which however, the Creeks soon converted into 
vowels ; the Y was soon softened down to a vowel 
sound. 

5. The next accession from the east was that of 
the three letters, Z. H. 0. and these nineteen cha- 
racters are all which the Greeks are said to have 
borrowed from the Phenicians, the other five being 
attributed to themselves. 

6. H at first simply expressed the aspirate 
breathing ; it is thus found in the celebrated Si- 
gean inscription of the sixth century, B.C. in the 

c3 



34 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

word Hf/ojuoK/oaroe, and this power it carried with 
it into the Latin, and thence into the English, and 
other modern languages ; it was first used to ex- 
press the long E. or ij, by Simonides the Younger. 

7. To this Simonides are attributed the three 
letters, £?, ¥, Q ; he lived a little before the Per- 
sian wars. 

8. To Epicharmus, who lived before Simonides,. 
the two letters <£ and X are attributed by Aris- 
totle ; others assign them to Palamedes, while 
others (as Euripides) give the whole alphabet to 
Palamedes. 

9. In the interval between Simonides and Aris- 
tophanes of Byzantium, the rough breathing was 
not indicated in writing. Aristophanes divided the 
H, and made one half of it P, the mark of the 
aspirate, and the other -J, that of the soft ; by 
degrees these marks became i_ and _i, and hence 
In the cursive character, ' and \ 

10. The complete alphabet of twenty-four let^ 
ters was first adopted by the people of Samos, then 
by the Ionian colonies in general, was introduced 
into Athens by Callistratus of Samos, but was not 
employed in any public inscriptions till the arch- 
onship of Euclides, B.C. 403. It was called the 
alphabet of Simonides, also 'Iam»ca ypa^/xara, to 
distinguish it from the old Cadmeian letters, the 
figures of some of which were considerably rounded, 
also 17 fiET EvkXh'Stjv 7pa/ujLtar(Ki7, to distinguish it 
from the alphabet of twenty-one letters, which was 
called 'Arnica ypa^fiara. 

11. iEschylus assigns the introduction of letters 
to Prometheus. 

12. That the Greek alphabet is essentially of 
Phenician or oriental origin appears from this, 
that the oriental custom of writing from right to 
left, originally prevailed in Greece, especially in 
inscriptions of a single line ; of this Coleridge 



TREATISE ON HOMEB. 35 

mentions two instances, viz.— -the Inscriptio Bur- 
goniana, on an amphora, communicated by Mr. 
Burgon of Smyrna to Dr. Clarke. It is, in common 
characters and order, rov Adevsov aOXov ejull ;* the 
other was found by Colonel Leake, on an iron hel- 
met at Olympia; it is Kotoe ficnroE<rev,-f the k in this 
is represented by the Hebrew koph or koppa, 
which from its similarity is supposed to be the 
Latin Q. The mode of writing from left to right 
was adopted about the time of the Persian inva- 
sion. 

13. The mode of writing the alternate lines from 
right to left was afterwards introduced, it was 
called Bov(TTpo(j)Yi^6v ypaysiv, from oxen in plough- 
ing. The laws of Solon (B.C. 562), and the Si- 
gean inscription probably later, were thus written. 

14. Sometimes the words were placed in a per- 
pendicular line, one over the other, in the form of 
a column, and this mode of writing was called 
Kiovrj^bv ypatysiv, from kIwv a column. 

15. The first materials on which the Greeks 
wrote were stone, wood, lead, or iron, (the letters 
being engraved by a stylus of gold or iron, called 
y\v<piov), then leaves, particularly of the palm tree; 
hence, according to some, letters were called 
<j>oiviica ypafifiara, not as Phenician, but as marked 
on the (poivit ; then the bark of trees, (particularly 
of the lime tree) ; hence, the origin of the Latin 
folia and liber ; then skins, SitpQipai, prepared by 
the Ionians ; and then almost universally, the 
/3uj3Xoc or papyrus, an Egyptian plant. 

16. The papyrus is now to be found in Egypt, 
only near Damietta and the lake Menzaleh. Two 
hundred years ago it was very common there, it 
grows abundantly in Syracuse, where it was sent 
by Ptolemy Philadelphus, as a present to Hiero. 

* Twv 'A0y,vs/wy «Sx<jy t)(/.l. f Ko/o; [J ImlrKliV* 



36 TaSATISE ON HOMER. 

The stem of the papyrus was separated into thin 
pellicles, which were extended across each other at 
right angles, wetted with the water of the Nile, 
then put into a press, and finally exposed to the 
sun. 

17. About the middle of the second century 
before Christ, the Greek kings of Egypt, envying 
the increasing fame of the library at Pergamus, 
founded by the princes of the house of Attains, 
prohibited the exportation of papyrus ; hence, the 
king of Pergamus encouraged the careful prepara- 
tion of $t(f>0{pat, and his subjects succeeded in 
manufacturing parchment — Pergamena charta. 

18. The Arabians make Joseph the first in- 
ventor of paper, and yet Mohammed's secretaries, 
in the seventh century after Christ, were obliged 
to write the Koran on palm leaves and mutton 
bones. 

19. The liquor used for ink was the bile of the 
sepia, or cuttle fish, called by Cicero, atramentum, 
and sometimes a preparation of minium or cinnabar 
was used, especially for writing rubrics. 



CHAPTER IV. 



LIFE OF HOMEP. 



1 . Tatian informs us that the life of Homer was 
written by several persons ; of these biographies 
none now remain but those ascribed to Herodotus 
and Plutarch. 

2. They are both considered to be spurious; 
that of Herodotus, on account of its minute and 
fabulous details — the lowness of the circumstances 
recorded — its being conducted by the spirit of a 
grammarian, and containing nothing in it above 
the life which a grammarian might lead — the ex- 
tempore verses contained in it — its counterfeit 
Ionic, and especially a contradiction which it gives 
to a statement of Herodotus himself in his history, 
viz. — that Homer lived four hundred years before 
his own time, whereas, in the life it is asserted, 
that he lived six hundred and twenty-two years 
before Xerxes'* invasion of Greece. 

3. Wood contends for the genuineness of this 
life ; he allows that the events are unsupported, 
and often trivial and minute ; still he thinks they 
were the most probable collection which Herodotus, 
who was born in the poet's neighbourhood, could 
make from tradition— that they have very little 
the appearance of fiction — that the objection from 
the lowness of the circumstances, is suggested by 
modern distinctions of rank — that the character of 



38 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

grammarian was unknown to Homer and Herodo- 
tus, and when it did appear, was much more res- 
pectable than of late date — that the extempore 
verses are a genuine mark of the age to which it 
pretends, being quotations from the period when 
writing was unknown, and all composition was in 
metre, and being frequently interspersed in Hero- 
dotus and other old authors. 

4. That ascribed to Plutarch appears to be 
more ancient than its supposed author, as it was 
known to Quinctilian and Seneca, who both lived 
before Plutarch. 

5. Ephorus says, that there were three brothers, 
natives of Cumae, Atelles, Maeon, and Dius ; Dius 
migrated to Ascra in Boeotia, where he became 
father of Hesiod, by his wife Pycimede ; Atelles 
died in Oumae, leaving his daughter Critheis under 
the care of her uncle Maeon, by whom becoming 
pregnant, she was given in marriage to Phemius, 
a schoolmaster of Smyrna, and near the baths on 
the river Meles gave birth to a child, from hence 
called Melesigenes. Aristotle says, that Critheis 
was a native of Ios ; that being with child by a 
demon or genius, she fled to the coast, where she 
was carried off by pirates, and presented to Maeon, 
king of the Lydians, who reigned at Smyrna ; that 
he married her, and on her death brought up the 
son (Melesigenes) she had shortly after her mar- 
riage, as his own ; hence the origin of the epithets, 
Melesigenes and Maeonides. 

6. Derivations of his name— fyxrj/otuw to follow, 
because blind men follow a guide ; or because he 
said he would ofxriptlv, or follow the Lydians, 
who pressed by the iEolians were abandoning 
Smyrna ; or 6 /n) opwv, one not seeing ; or 6 pripog, 
because he had some mark on his thigh to denote 
his illegitimacy; or ofirtpog, a pledge or hostage, 
because he was given up as a hostage by the peo- 



TREATISE ©Jf HOMER. 29 

pie of Smyrna to Chios ; or bjutov Upeiv, concinere, 
to sing in concert, (which etymology favours WolTs 
theory ;) or bpriptiv, to assemble together; or bfibu 
OjOEtv, to connect together ; or bfibv tlptiv, to speak 
in council, because he urged the inhabitants of 
Smyrna to make war on Colophon. 

7. According to Herodotus, Melanopus, a set- 
tler in Cuma, was married to the daughter of 
Omyres ; their child was Crytheis ; on their death 
she was confided to Cleanax, and subsequently was 
brought under the care of Ismenias to Smyrna, 
where she married Phemius ; before her marriage 
she supported herself by spinning. 

8. Homer received his education under an emi- 
nent teacher named Pronepides ; succeeded Phe- 
mius in his school, and remained at Smyrna, until 
Mentes, a Leucadian merchant, persuaded him to 
travel ; that he travelled extensively is unques- 
tionable, and the accuracy with which he described 
the manners, customs, and peculiarities of the dif- 
ferent nations, must have been the result of per- 
sonal acquaintance and attentive observation. 
Besides the accurate knowledge of continental 
Greece Proper, displayed in the catalogue, it is 
clear that he was acquainted with the islands both 
in the iEgean and Ionian seas, Crete, Cyprus, and 
the coasts of Asia Minor from the Hellespont 
indefinitely southward, Phrygia, Caria, Pisidia, and 
Phoenicia ; also with iEgypt, Lybia, and iEthio- 
pia. Amongst the Trojan allies, he mentions the 
Paphlagonians, from the river Parthenius (the 
modern Bartan), also Cytorum, and the river 
Thermodon (now the Ternieh), are mentioned. 
If the Chalybes are meant in the expression rriXodsv 
IS r AXvj3rjc ; this would be the farthest point east- 
ward mentioned in the poems, the Chalybes being 
in the longitude of Aleppo. In Ithaca he was left 
by Mentes, and was there detained some time by 



40 TREATISE OX HOMER. 

a defluxion in his eyes, which afterwards at Colo- 
phon terminated in blindness ; in Ithaca he was fur- 
nished by Mentor with the materials for the com- 
position of the odyssey. 

9. His blindness was by some attributed to a 
more dignified cause. Being desirous of obtaining 
an adequate conception of his hero, he visited his 
tomb at the Sigean Promontory, and besought the 
mighty shade to appear for one moment in all his 
former glory ; Achilles rose into sight, in armour 
of such intense brightness, that the astonished 
bard became blind in the act of devout contempla- 
tion. 

10. From Ithaca he is said to have visited Italy 
and Spain, but there is no sign in his poems of 
any distinct knowledge of countries west of the 
Ionian Sea, though Sicily is twice mentioned in the 
odyssey under the name of Thrinakia, and the 
Siculi are once mentioned as barbarians, to whose 
brutality the suitors threaten to commit Telema- 
ehus. The general ignorance in his time regarding 
the lands beyond the Ionian Sea, is shown by his 
selecting them as the scenes for the spsciosa mira- 
cida of the odyssey. 

11. From the Phenicians, whom he represents 
as a sea-faring people, he probably derived his ex- 
tensive information with regard to early naval 
affairs, and in Egypt, (Herodotus tells us) he was 
furnished with the outlines of his system of mytho- 
logy, which became the basis of the religion of 
Greece. 

12. From the striking similarity between man- 
ners and opinions, as they are exhibited in his 
works and the sacred writings (which we shall con- 
sider hereafter), it has been inferred, that he 
became acquainted in Egypt with the Old Testa- 
ment. It would be more to the point, if Mr. 
Wood's supposition were well-founded, viz. that he 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 41 

visited Judea, but the main authority for this opi- 
nion is derived from a conjectural emendation of a 
line, cited by Strabo from the Iliad, but found in 
none of the MSS. of Homer ; the line in Strabo 
is, x w P$ * vl S/oi/o£vti*YS?jc iv ir'iovi Srj/itjj, corrected 
by Dr. Taylor, \wpio tv\ Spvoevr' '\ov$yiq ev ttiovi 
Sri/my; but the similarity is sufficiently explained 
by referring the ideas and expressions to the same 
patriarchal origin, and to countries situated at no 
remote distance from each other. 

13. In the hymn to Apollo, (if it be genuine, as 
Thucydides thinks), Homer, like Milton, tells us 
of his blindness, rvfyXbg avrjp, oIku Se X«j> tvl 
iranrciXoiooTQ. That he was not born blind, appears 
from his accurate and extensive knowledge of men 
and countries ; his exquisite perception of natural 
objects ; his picturesque delineation of scenery ; 
and from its not being mentioned (with this ex- 
ception) in his many writings. 

14. At Cumae he is said to have requested an 
allowance from the public treasury, which was re- 
fused, and he left Cumse for Phocsea, expressing a 
wish that the town might never be immortalized 
as the birth-place of a poet. 

15. His verses were admired everywhere except 
at Smyrna, his native country. At Phocsea, Thes- 
torides, a schoolmaster, obtained a copy of his 
verses, and then sailed to Chios, where he recited 
them as his own ; Homer followed, was rescued by 
Glaucus, a goatherd from the attack of his dogs, 
(which suggested the account of Ulysses being at- 
tacked by dogs at the porch of the house of 
Eunueus), introduced by him to his master, with 
whom he lived for some time at Bolissus, and edu- 
cated his children : (Thestorides fled at his arri- 
val) ; here he amassed wealth, married, had two 
daughters, one of whom died young, and the other 
married the person whose children he educated. 



4i TREATISE ON HOMER. 

According to Herodotus, he died at Ios on his way 
to Athens ; Proclus says, in consequence of falling 
over a stone ; Plutarch says, from vexation at not 
being able to solve the fishermen's riddle (at Ios, 
on his way to a musical festival at Thebes) ; ow 
tXofitv, A(7ro/x£<T0a, oa ov\ t\ojj.ev, (jtzpo/uiEaQa, against 
whom he had been warned by the oracle. 

16. Seven cities contended for the honour of his 
birth-place — Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, 
Hhodos, Argos, Athense. Orbis de patria certat, 
Homere, tua. To these may be added, Egypt and 
Ithaca. 

1 7. Of these, Smyrna and Chios have the best 
pretensions to the honour. If Smyrna be his birth- 
place, it is remarkable that he never once men- 
tioned it in his writings ; this may have occurred 
from their neglect of him during his life ; after his 
death, they struck medals in honour of him, (in 
one of which he is represented as reading, a proof 
that he was not born blind) ; dedicated a temple 
to him, and burned Zoilus in effigy, who abused 
him. 

18/ Leo Allatius, a native of Chios, warmly ad- 
vocates the claims of Chios, but the lines he quotes 
from the hymn to Apollo, only proves that he lived 
there. Homer himself no where intimates that he 
was born there ; he was mistaken in supposing the 
Homeridae of Chios to be his descendants, when 
they were but reciters of his poems, especially at 
the quinquennial games the Chians had instituted 
in honour of him. Strabo thinks he was a Chian, 
from his knowledge of the Icarian Sea, but he 
knew other seas equally well. 

19. The only ground of Colophon's claim, is that 
he taught a school there ; and of Ios's, his tomb 
©n the sea shore, 

20. That the Homer of the Iliad was an Asia- 
tic Greek is evident. First, II. 2nd. the Locriane 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 43 

are said to live iripr\v Ev/3otnc, beyond Euboea* 
Second, the Echinades are said to be iripr\v a\hg y 
*HAiSoe avra, appropriately with the situation of a 
resident in Asia. Third, Odys. 15th. Eumseus de- 
scribes to Ulysses the Island of Syros, it is said by 
him to be 'O/oruynje KaOvirEpQev, above or beyond 
Ortygia, quite inconsistent with the relative posi- 
tion of Ithaca, where the description is given ; 
(Syros being nearer to Ithaca than Ortygia is)* 
But the inconsistency may be removed, by suppos- 
ing that Homer forgot that it was in Ithaca the 
conversation took place, and used language which 
suited only his own position on the eastern side of 
the JEigean. Fourth, the west or north-west wind 
(Zfyu/ooc) is always represented in the Iliad as 
cold and stormy, and very often as blowing from 
Thrace ; (succeeding poets describe all the winds 
as dwelling in a cave in Thrace, but Homer affirms 
this only of Zephyrus and Boreas ; and when on 
one occasion he assembles them all there, it is at 
the house of Zephyrus, the rest being visiters) the 
point of view is evidently from the Asiatic side of 
the iEgean. Virgil always gives a different cha- 
racter of Zephyrus, and one suitable to that wind 
in his own country. Fifth, the order in which 
Otus and Ephialtes in the odyssey pile the moun- 
tains, is true to the eye of a person approaching 
from the east. Olympus is the base, then Ossa, 
and Pelion on the top. Virgil reverses the order, 
placing Pelion as the base, and Olympus as the 
summit. Twice only in the odyssey is Zephyrus 
invested with the gentle character given him by 
the latin poets, and these instances are in the de- 
scriptions of the gardens of Alcinous and of the 
Elysian plain, both of them scenes of fancy* 
Sixth, he always treats countries in proportion to 
their distance from Ionia, with that reverence and 
curiosity which distance is apt to raise (as Italy 



44 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

and Sicily), whilst the neighbourhood of the scene* 
of action seems to be too familiar for description, ^ 
and is introduced only from its connection with the^ 
facts, yet always is so exactly described as shows' 
a perfect knowledge of the ground ; whilst his 1 
scenery is more Ionian, his customs, particularly 
those relating to sacrifices, are ^Eolian. It seems 
impossible to decide between the pretensions of 
Ionia and iEolia, still less between Chios and 
Smyrna ; Wood inclines to Chios. 

21. Bryant's theory — that Homer was a native 
of Ithaca, but descended from an Ionian or Mile- 
sian family, settled in Egypt ; that his name was 
Melasigenes, a native or son of a native of the 
banks of the Nile, which was formerly called Melas 
or black ; that the change to Melesigenes was 
made by the Smyrneans, who wished to have him 
for their countryman. He quotes the answer of 
the Pythia to the Emperor Adrian, (preserved in 
the " contention of Homer and Hesiod)," which 
•declared the poet to have been born at Ithaca, and 
to have been the son of Telemachus, and Epicaste 
or Policaste, the daughter of Nestor ; and he sug- 
gests that the odyssey contains an account of the 
life and adventures of Homer himself, and of the 
fidelity of his own wife in the character of Pene- 
lope. Bryant's arguments merely prove that 
Homer was well acquainted with Ithaca ; it is, 
however, generally believed that he has trans- 
planted many events of his own life into those of 
his heroes, and that in many of his characters the 
names of persons are preserved, with whom he had 
been connected in life by the ties of friendship or 
hospitality; for instance, that of Tychius the leather- 
dresser. II. vii. 220, and of Mentor in the odyssey. 

22. Koliades, a native of Ithaca, thinks that 
Ulysses himself was the author of the Iliad and 
Odyssey. He and Bryant agree in not separating 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 45 

the authorship of the poems : M. Le Chevalier 
agrees with Koliades. Knight separates the poems 
by a hundred years, Milman by a less period ; he 
supposes the author of the Iliad to be an Asiatic 
Greek of Thessalian or iEolic origin, and the 
author of the Odyssey a Peloponessian. 

23. Sir William Gell and Koliades think that 
the present Ithaca or Thiaki perfectly corresponds 
with the ancient Ithaca ; against this opinion there 
are two geographical difficulties put forward by 
Volcker, viz. — the disappearance of Dulichium, 
and the north-eastern position of Thiaki, whereas 
Ithaca is placed by Homer to the west of all the 
other islands. The answers attempted to be given 
to these difficulties, are — First, Dulichium may 
have been attached to the Continent by the depo- 
sitions of the river, or may have sunk in the sea, 
or may have been only a part of Cephalonia, and 
that Homer was mistaken in supposing it a sepa- 
rate island ; but then what becomes of his boasted 
familiarity with the localities of the main scene of 
his poem ? It may be remarked, that the subjects 
of Ulysses are all called in the catalogue, Cepalo- 
nians, KE<£aAXf) >'<?£, whilst the troops from Duli- 
chium were under the command of Meges. Second, 
Ithaca, says Homer, dv a\\ ictTreu rrpbg %6<f>ov, at Si 
t avevde irpog riw r', yeXiov te, it is contended that 
%6<t>oQ means the north, not the west ; but the 
antithesis in this line, and the constant use of 
Homer, prove Z6<pog to mean the west. Volcker's 
own view is, that Cephalonia was the Homeric 
Ithaca and Thiaki the ancient Same. 

24. Schubarth, an opponent of Wolf, thinks 
that Homer was a Trojan poet, living under the 
descendants of iEneas in Ilium ; that he represents 
the Trojans as more civilized and refined than the 
Greeks ; that many of the Grecian heroes, as 
phoenix, Patroclus, Tlepolemus, had been forced 



46 TREATISE ON HOMEB. 

to fly from their country for deeds of violence ; 
that the Greeks were under the patronage of violent 
and warlike deities, as Juno, Neptune, Pallas ; the 
Trojans under peaceful, as Apollo, Venus, and Ju- 
piter ; that Priam is superior to Agamemnon, and 
Hector to Achilles ; and that in the Odyssey, he 
details with vindictive delight, the misfortunes of 
the invaders of his country. 

25. Thiersch agrees with Wolf, but maintains 
that the Peloponnesus was the native country both 
of the Iliad and Odyssey ; that the bards wan- 
dered with the Ionians, first to Attica, thence to 
Asia, and after the Doric invasion, returned as 
strangers to European Greece. The accuracy 
with which the interior of the Peloponnesus is de^ 
scribed in the Odyssey, proves that it belongs to 
the Peloponnesus ; but Milman remarks, there 
are scenes in the Iliad which point out the know- 
ledge of an eye-witness, as the simile of the sdaring 
and settling of the birds on the meadows of the 
Cayster. 

Macineca thinks that Homer was a native of 
Oumse in Italy, and Barnes, that he was Solomon ; 
that by reading Omeros backward in the Hebrew 
manner, we come to Soremo, same as Solemo, 
Solomo. q. e. d. 

26. Age of Homer. The Arundel marble places 
Homer B.C. 907 ; (if we take this as the sera of 
his birth, it will approximate to the date of Mit- 
ford, Wood, &c. 850 B.C.) the Ionian migration, 
B.C. 1044 ; the return of the Heracleida?, B.C. 
1104 ; and the capture of Troy, B.C. 1184. Heyno 
approves this calculation, but it is at variance with 
Newton's, who fixes the capture of Troy, B.C. 904, 
and Homer, B.C. 8,70. Herodotus says, that 
Homer and Hesiod were senior to himself by four 
hundred years, and he lived 444 B.C. Thucydides 
says that Homer was bora long after the Trojan 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 47 

war. Lycurgus is placed about three hundred 
years after the Trojan war, or according to the 
common date, 884 B.C. ; and he must have lived 
after Homer, though Strabo mentions an interview 
he had with Homer, for the purpose of settling the 
constitution of Sparta, but this seems fabulous,* 
and the age of Lycurgus himself is much disputed ; 
the earliest date of the kings of Sparta, which can be 
fixed with accuracy is that of Anaxandrides and 
Ariston, 560 B.C. Theopompus, indeed, may with 
some probability be placed about 750 B.C. Cicero 
indefinitely asserts, that he lived many years before 
the- foundation of Rome ; and Vico thinks that he 
was contemporary with Numa. 

27. Wakefield deduces his age from his use of 
the digamma : the time at which Homer lived 
seems fixed (he remarks), within a determinate 
sera by that peculiarity of the iEolic dialect, which 
uniformly employed the digamma as a distinct 
character before certain words and between certain 
syllables, and of which no regular traces are dis- 
coverable but in him and Hesiod, (it is not uni- 
formly used in Homer), an sera more or less con- 
temporary with that age, in which various parts of 
Italy were colonized by different emigrations of 
iEolian Greeks, who communicated this criterion 
of their dialect to the Roman language. 

28. The evidence of the poems themselves is of 
two kinds, positive and negative, arising from what 
they mention and what they omit ; too much con- 
fidence, however, may be placed in the latter, for, 
as Heyne justly remarks, " perperam ponitur poe- 
tarn omnia ignorasse quae non apposuit in carmine. 

29. Several incidental circumstances favour the 



• Strabo does not consider that such a poet and such a legis- 
lator do not properly belong to the same state of manners. 
(Wood). 



48 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

opinion of an early date, for instance, though works 
in ivory were of very remote antiquity, yet the 
elephant itself was known only to the Indians, ' 
until the Macedonians passed into Asia, and ac- 
cordingly we meet with no mention of this animal j 
in Homer, though he repeatedly speaks of the use 
of ivory in ornamental workmanship. In the 
Odyssey, the Nile is spoken of as the iEgyptus, or 
river of Egypt, by which name it passed in the 
time of Moses and Joshua — Ody. I\ 300, A. 355, 
Gen. xv. 18, Ex. viii. 6, and in the Iliad he calls 
it wKtavbg ; so that in Homer's time, it had not 
received its more recent appellation of NgfXo g. 
From Hesiod's use of this word, and from his 
shortening the first syllable of icaXo^, which is al- 
ways lengthened in Homer, it may be inferred, 
that Hesiod was more recent than Homer, though 
it is generally believed they were contemporaries, 
(as appears from the poem called "the contest 
between Homer and Hesiod), and the period of 
Hesiod is probably determined (from II. 1 74, Oper. 
and Dies.) to the age succeeding the Trojan war. 
There is no mention of the Amphictyonic council 
in the writings of Homer, which would scarcely 
have been the case, had it acquired that import- 
ance to which it attained even in the early times J 
of ancient Greece. Had Homer lived after the 
sera of the Olympiads (B.C. 776), the public annals 
would have recorded his birth. 

29, The limits of the period comprehended by 
the subjects, or allusion of the poems, are six 
generations before and four after the Trojan war. 
The genealogy of the royal family of Troy gives 
the limits, ascending from Priam through Laome- - 
don, Ilus, Tros, and Ericthonius, to Dardanus, [ 
the son of Jupiter ; the lowest point of descent is 
marked by II. 20, 307.* (Neptune's prophecy.) • 

* The6e words occur also in the hymn to Venus, v. 197, 198; 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 4>9 

NOv Sc Sri Alvdao /3o] T/ooWo~tv ava^tt, Kai nai^wv 
iraiSag, toi ksv /jLtTomoOe ytvojvTat. Here he men- 
tions, as the latest event, the grandchildren of 
j£neas as reigning in Troy ; whence we may infer, 
that the Iliad was finished about half a century 
after Troy was taken. Second, in II. A. 51, 54, 
in a speech of Juno's, he seems to intimate the 
insecure state of the chief existing dynasties of the 
race of Pelops, sciz. Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae. 
Third, in Odyssey ( i. 351.) it is remarked, that 
those subjects are preferred for poetry, in which 
through the recency of the transactions, the hear- 
ers have a nearer interest ; this would stand con- 
tradicted by his own practice, if the events which 
he celebrates happened five, four, three, two, or 
even one century before he wrote. Fourth, in 
Odyssey viii. 578, concerning subjects of poetry it 
is said, that the gods wrought the fate of Troy, that 
there might be subjects of poetry to future genera- 
tions ; had he lived after the return of the Hera- 
clidse, that revolution would have furnished subjects 
far more nearly interesting than the fall of Troy. 
Fifth, in II. ii. 486, he says, " I have these things 
only by report, and not of my own knowledge ;" 
this proves that he was not an eye-witness ; at the 
same time it would be superfluous information to. 
his auditors, if he did not live so near those times, 
that in his elderhood it might be doubted if his 
early youth had not been passed in them. Sixth, 



they destroy tlie foundation of the Roman claim to Trojan des- 
cent, through iEneas. Virgil reads itavrtaai for rpunrai, and 
Writes, Nunc domus jEneae cunctis dominabitur oris, et nati 
natorum et qui nascentur abillis, x«< •nallm vallts. Wood thinks 
that as Homer is so minute and circumstantial, the genera, 
tion here spoken of, is that with which he himself lived and 
conversed ; the .<Eolian migration would probably disturb that 
(very generation in their possessions, which therefore the poet 
jdid not live to see. It would have been difficult and useless for 
bim to have forged this account of the family of iEneas. 

D 

! 



50 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

he is always remarkably disposed to extol the 
family of «#£neas, and careful to avoid what might 
give them offence ; hence it is inferred, that the 
posterity of that chief existed, and were powerful 
in the poet's age. 

30. This theory of "Wood and Mitford does not. 
well accord with such language as olot vvv fiporoi 
efcnv, II. v. 304 ; to this it is answered that Nestor 
asserts the superiority of those who flourished in 
his youth, to Diomede, or any others, the contem- 
poraries of his old age. But such eulogies of the 
heroes of former days suit old age, and with simi- 
lar propriety the youthful Sthenelus indignantly) 
exclaims, rifiuQ tol iraTtpuv fxiy a/xa/uovce zvypfiiu 
ctvat : from either his or Nestor's assertions, no- 
thing more should be inferred, than that the poet ! 
accommodated the language to his characters, but" 
when he speaks in his own person, exaggeration is . 
culpable misrepresentation, unless the subject is? : 
magnified by the distance. This theory also opposes- - 
the received opinion that Homer was an Ionian* 
poet, as it places him before the period of the . 
Ionian migration. To this Wood replies, that 
there were Ionians in Asia, before a colony of that 
name was brought thither ; that there is no allu- 
sion in the Iliad or Odyssey to this migration ; and 
we may as well derive the name of Ionian, as we 
find it written in Homer, from Javeon, the son of 
Japhet, as from Ion, the son of Xuthus. The 
perfection also of the Homeric language seems tcf 
be inconsistent with so early a date. 

31. Of the negative evidence, the most important?, 
is the omission of any notice of the return of the, 
Heraclidse (eighty years after the Trojan war). 
It is highly improbable that Homer should take] 
no notice of so remarkable a revolution, involving 
a new partition of the country, and the ruin of the 
noblest families mentioned in his poems, and the 



TBBATISB ON HOMER. 51 

substitution of the republican for the kingly form 
of government through Greece, had he lived after 
the period in which it took place. To this Heyne 
answers, that it was not in the province of the 
poet, but of the historian, to mention such parti- 
culars ; that it was in no respect connected with 
the object of his poem ; that it would be inconsis- 
tent to notice the overthrow of the descendants of 
Pelops, whose praises he sung ; and that he does 
not mention the Ionian migration, though an Asia- 
tic Ionian ; and in the same way he may have 
been silent on the subject of the return of the 
Heraclidse, by which that migration was caused. 

32. Mitford completes the evidence which the 
poet himself furnishes concerning the time in 
which he lived, by adding — First, his ignorance of 
idolatry. Second, of hero worship. Third, of re- 
publics. Fourth, of tyrannies. Fifth, of the divi- 
sion of the Greek nation into Ionian, iEolian, and 
Dorian. And sixth, of a general name for the 
whole. We must add, seventh, the form of worship 
which he describes without temples, as without 
images. Eighth, the little fame of oracles. Ninth, 
his familiap- knowledge of Sidon, and his silence 
Concerning Tyre. And tenth, the loss of his works 
in Peloponnesus, whose new inhabitants had com- 
paratively little interest in them, and their preser- 
vation among the colonists in Asia, who reckoned 
his principal heroes among their ancestors. AH 
these circumstances together appear to prove thatr 
Homer lived before the return of the Heraclidae. 
It may be added, that the catalogue of ships, which 
exhibits a correct account of the Peloponnesus', 
before the Dorian conquest, does not contain a sin- 
gle reference to any political change which took 
place therein subsequent to that event ; and though 
there are several references to Hercules, there fa 

* We may also add, his silence concerning the council of tfctfJ 



52 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

not one respecting his descendants. If his allusion 
to the destruction of Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae, 
be not a prediction, or casually thrown out, he 
must have lived after that event, which followed 
the return of the Heraclidae ; but it would seem to 
be either one or other. Wood adds, that his pic- 
ture of society agrees best with the early stage of 
It, and that his account of persons and facts could 
not have passed through many hands ; for his 
manner, not only of describing actions and charac- 
ters, but of drawing portraits, looks very much as 
if he had been either present, or at least had taken 
his information from eye-witnesses. 

33. From the collection of his poems by the 
Pisistradidse down- to the Christian fathers, the 
reputation of Homer constantly increased, till even 
games were instituted, statues and temples erected, 
and sacrifices offered to him as to a divinity ; there 
were such temples at Smyrna, Chios, and Alexan- 
dria, and the Argives sacrificed to Apollo and 
Homer together. 

34. This unrivalled popularity was founded on 
the excellence of his poetry, on the national sym- 
pathies of the Greeks, and on the ardent expres- 
sions of respect which all their great men used 
when speaking of his poems, viz. — the poets, Pin- 
dar, JEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides ; the 
masters of history, philosophy, and oratory — Hero- 
dotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Demosthe- 
nes; the physical philosopliers, Democritus, Anaxa- 
goras, Xeno, Chrysippus. To all these, Homer 
was what Moses was to the ancient Hebrew of 
genius, to the Davids and Isaiahs, and the Iliad 
and Odyssey were to the Greeks, what the Penta- 
teuch was to the Children of Israel. But the 
authority, criticism, sanction, and edition of Aris- 
totle, especially contributed to establish the autho- 
rity of Homer on a permanent basis ; he mainly 
helped to preserve his poems from destruction, and 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 53 

his authority prevailed with a long series of disci- 
ples of the Peripatetic school, to study Homer with 
the continually increasing resources of philosophy 
and grammar. The Alexandrian critics followed, 
and after them Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and 
Strabo, were the most effective promoters of Ho- 
mer's fame ; the former in exhibiting the metrical 
skill and the rhetorical artifice of the poet, the 
latter, in elevating him into an invaluable treasure 
of the ancient geography, and a perfect rule of 
poetical decorum. Demetrius Phalereus, and Plu- 
tarch also, were the authors of treatises now lost 
on the style, invention, morals, and philosophy of 
Homer. 

35. The Latin writers from Cicero and Lucre- 
tius down to Quinctilian and Ausonius, agreed with 
that sentiment of Propertius, " Nescio quid majus j j 
nascitur Iliade ;" and even the Roman lawyers 
cited him as authority in matters of jurisprudence, 
and he is called " pater omnis virtutis," in the 
Pandects of Justinian, A.D. 534. 

36. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, 
some of the warmest admirers of his poetry cen- 
sured particular defects in his poems, sciz. alleged 
abuses in his representation of the gods, particu- 
larly the battle of the gods. It was on account of 
the primeval, authoritative, biblical character of 
the Homeric poetry, that Heraclitus, Plato, and 
Xenophanes did this, for these same complained 
not of the sarcasms of iEschylus, or the free-think- 
ing of Euripides. Plato thought so highly of his 
poetry, that he burned his own verses in despair 
of rivalling those glorious hexameters which de- 
scribe the conflict of the Nile and the Sea, Od. iv. 
149 ; whilst Cicero calls him the Homer of Phi- 
losophers, and Themistius says he retained his 
exact likeness. 

37. Zoilus, a Macedonian, who is said to have 



54 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

-visited Alexandria, B.C. 278, wrote nine books 
against Homer, entitled \poyog, or censure of Ho- 
mer ; he was despised by all ; at the Olympic 
games he attempted to recite his attack, and was 
thrown from the Scironian rocks ; burned in effigy 
in Egypt, at a festival in honour of Homer, and 
burned in reality at Smyrna, his pyre being com- 
posed in part of a collection of copies of his xpoyog. 

38. Zoilus's six objections are sufficiently absurd. 
First, Homer is ridiculous in making Apollo em- 
ploy himself in killing dogs and mules. Second, 
In describing Diomede , s armour as blazing about 
iiim, for then why was he not burned by it. Third, 
In making Idseus leave his chariot, he should have 
fled in it. Fourth, he wanted manners in making 
Achilles turn Priam out of his tent. Fifth, be 
says that Ulysses lost an equal number of men 
out of each ship, which is impossible. Sixth, he 
5s ridiculous, in turning his men into pigs. The 
names of two other Zoilists have been preserved, 
Daphidas and Parthenius, " ex Homero nomen 
iiabent." 

39. About the beginning of the second century 
of the Christian sera, the tide of admiration began 
to turn. The Christian fathers accused him ©f 
framing his fables on the works of Moses, as the 
rebellion of the giants from the building of Babel, 
and the casting of Ate out of heaven from the fall 
of Lucifer ; also for wounding Venus, imprisoning 
Mars, Jupiter, &c. and Plato, who expelled h\yn 
from his commonwealth, was most admired by the 
fathers. 

40. From this until the twelfth century he was 
nearly forgotten, when Eustathius, archbishop of 
Thessalonica, composed his commentary on Homer, 
entitled Ylapncf3o\a\, and consisting chiefly of ex- 
tracts of older scholiasts, as Apion, Porphyry, &«. 

41. Homer escaped being included in that so- 



TREATISE ON HOMER. && 

lemn bonfire of the Greek comic, lyric, and elegiac 
poets, viz. — Menander, Diphilus, Apollodorus, 
Philemon, Alexes, Sappho, Anacreon, Bion, Ale- 
man, Alcseus, which took place at Constantinople 
in the tenth or eleventh century, and from which 
Aristophanes was saved by Chrysostom. 

42. A.D. 1.309. Robert, king of Naples, was an] 
effective patron of Greek, and his exertions wereF 
seconded by Bernard Barlaam the monk. Bar*- 
laam was sent from Constantinople to Italy, to 
propose an union between the Greek and Latin 
churches ; he met Petrarch at Avignon and Boc- 
caccio at Naples, whom he instructed in Greek, 
One of his most distinguished pupils was Leontius 
Pilatus, for whom Boccaccio procured a professor- 
ship at Florence, where Leontius lectured on Ho- 
mer, and published the first complete Latin version 
of Homer, the ancient ones of Livius_Andronicus 
in Iambics, of Accius Labeo in Hexameters, and 
of Cnseus Ma£ius having perished. The version of 
Leontius was lost, and the earliest Latin transla- 
tion now extant, is that by Laurentius Valla, 
printed at Brescia, 1474, fourteen years before the 
first printed edition of all the Homeric poems, 
which was published at Florence, 1488, by the 
Nerli, and was prepared by Chalcondylas, who then 
occupied the Florentine chair. 

43. The first thorough Zoilist after the revival 
of Greek literature, was the elder Scaliger (Julius 
Caesar), who preferred Virgil to Homer; he also 
preferred the tragedies of Seneca to those of 
Euripides. Though a profound Latin scholar, he 
was incompetently versed in Greek. 

44. Almost every man of poetic genius in Italy 
has been an admirer of Homer. Tasso said, that 
no poetry came nearer to eternity than Homer's. 
Tassoni is the only exception, and he admits that 
the beauty of the style and versification, like the 



56 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

Arabic of the Koran, nearly conceals the number- 
less absurdities of the poetry itself. 

45. The Zoilists of France, at the period of the 
famous dispute at the end of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, were La Mothe, St. Evremond, Fontenelle, 
St. Hyacinth, Terasson, Perrault, who commenced 
the war, and Cesarotti (an Italian by birth), who 
in his vast edition of Homer contains the essence 
of the opinions of these writers, as also of Voltaire, 
D'Alembert, Marmontel, &c. on this subject. 
Their opponents were Boileau, Gacon, Madame 
Dacier, Fraguier, Fenelon, &c. Both parties were 
in the wrong. Throughout the whole controversy 
there is not a glimpse of the true principles of 
judgment ; they defended and assailed the Iliad 
and Odyssey upon grounds and for qualities which 
neither do nor could exist. Thus, the Iliad was 
defended on the authority and model of the iEneid, 
and even of the Jerusalem delivered by Tasso, or 
the Henriade of Voltaire. 

46. Instances of objections to Homer by the 
French Zoilists. First, his languid and uniform 
manner of introducing speeches, as — " Such a one 
said, such a one answered." Second, his repetition 
of long epithets, having no relation to the present 
action. Third, his slowness, which causes his 
heroes never to be in a hurry, even in moments of 
the greatest impetus. Fourth, the tears of Achil- 
les, inconsistent both with his personal character, 
and the occasion of his shedding them. Fifth, 
Jupiter causing Olympus to tremble by his nod, 
when he wished to be secret. Sixth, after three 
divinities had been laid under contribution to form 
the portrait of Agamemnon, who could have ima- 
gined that a bull would make his appearance to 
finish it \ II. ii. 480. Seventh, his always calling 
the ships black, and his expression, " cheeks of a 
ship," II. ii. 637. They considered not the anti- 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 57 

quity and peculiarity of the Homeric poems, they 
bring them to the bar of Latin, Italian, and 
French epic poems, and pronounce every thing 
that would be incongruous in these, a fault in 
Homer. 



d 3 



CHAPTER V. 



THE TROJAN CONTROVERSY. 



1. The controversy as to the historical character \ 
of the war, and the existence and precise situation r 
of Troy, is not of so modern a date as is generally \ 
supposed. Stesi chorus. a native of Himera in j 
Sieily, born B.C. 632, in his Palinodia to Helen, { 
states that she never eloped to Troy, but that the i 
Trojans carried off a mere counterfeit image of the j 
heroine. Euripides, in his Electra and Helena,j 
embraces the same opinion : the latter play is en- n 
iirely founded on> it. Herodotus seriously opposes j 
Homer's account, he says that Paris having car- , 
ried off Helen, was driven by a tempest to the i 
Canopic mouth of the Nile, where Thonis was 

fovernor ; that his slaves flying to the temple of 
lercules, accused their master of his crime ; that . 
Thonis sent Paris to Memphis, to Proteus the j 
king, with Helen and all his treasures ; that on the n 
conviction of Paris, Proteus ordered him to leave 
Egypt in three days, and detained Helen and the [ 
treasure until Menelaus should claim them ; that 
the Trojans had always denied the possession of 7 
Helen, but the Greeks disbelieved them, and took - 
their city, when discovering the truth, they sent 
Menelaus to Egypt ; that Proteus restored his wife 
and property, but Menelaus committing some out- 
rages on the coast, was obliged to fly as well as he i 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 59 

could, He thinks this account was known to 
Homer, but did not suit his purpose. His proofs 
of this supposition are, a passage in the Iliad 
( Z. vi. 289 ), in which Paris is said to have touched 
at Sidon on his way back to Troy, and the passages 
in the Odyssey (A. iv. 227 — 551), in which Helen 
is mentioned to have received drugs from the wife 
of Thonis, ana Menelaus speaks of his own deten- 
tion in Egypt ; and hence he argues that the 
Cypriac verses could not be Homer's, because they 
state that Paris brought Helen from Sparta to 
Troy in three days. As an argument for the truth 
of his own account, he says it is not probable that 
Priam would have risked the destruction of his 
kingdom, merely to gratify Paris, had it been in 
his power to have restored Helen. Theocritus, in 
his JSpithalamium, (which bears marks of an ac- 
quaintance with the Song of Solomon), maintains 
the chastity of Helen. Isocrates does the same in 
his Encomium; and Dion Chrysostom, at the end 
of the first century, maintains that Troy was never 
taken by the Greeks, and that Helen was lawfully 
married to Paris with the consent of her father. 
Metrodorus, a native of Lampsacus, and Anaxago- 
ras, the preceptor of Socrates, denied all authority 
to the common story of the war ; and even Thw- 
cydides, whose quotations have imparted more 
historical weight to Homer than any other circum- 
stance, guards his allegations of his authority with 
most cautious phrases, as "if any one will take 
him for a witness," &c. 

2. Bryant has gone further than any preceding 
writer in his theory on this subject. He main- 
tained that the Troy secretly intended was a town 
of that name on the right bank of the Nile oppo- 
site Memphis, and that Homer being of Egyptian 
extraction, had transferred the locality of a war 
which had actually taken place at the Egyptian 
Troy to the shores of the iEgean, and had arrayed 



60 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

it in Grecian costume and circumstance, for the 
purpose of flattering his countrymen. 

3. His arguments are the following : — First, 
Helen's age ; she must have been one hundred and 
four years old in the last year of the war : her twin 
brothers were in full manhood at the Argonautic 
expedition, say twenty-five, and it took place 
seventy-nine years before the capture of Troy. 
Telemachus sees her ten years afterwards at 
Sparta as beautiful as ever. Even according to 
Homer she must have been old, as she was a 
mother when she left Sparta with Paris, say 20, 
from that to the last year of the war was twenty 
years, II. xxiv. 768 ; and Telemachus sees her ten 
years afterwards, beautiful at the age of fifty. 
But Bryant forgot her divine origin and her pecu- 
liar destiny : his second argument is taken from 
the disproportion between the number of ships and 
men, with - the greatest efforts of the nation in 
more civilized times. The catalogue reckons 100,000 
soldiers ; at Marathon there were but 10,000, at 
Platsea 72,500. In the catalogue there are 1200 
ships ; at Artemisium 271, and at Salamis 378. 
His third argument is taken from the inconsistency 
of the supposed site of Troy, with its present dis- 
tance from the sea-coast. The eminence behind 
Bunarbachi (the spring head), the site of Troy, 
according to Le Chevalier, Colonel Leake, &c. is 
now eleven or twelve miles from the coast, and on 
the day in which Patroclus was killed, the Greeks 
march twice to the walls of Troy, and are twice 
beaten back, a space of near fifty miles. He also 
cites the lines in the twentieth book of the Iliad, 
to show that Troy was not built on an eminence, 
v lXioe Ipri zv 7T£c>/'ti> 7T£7roXtorro, v. 216. The plain 
eastward or within the Sigseum, is generally sup- 
posed and truly, to be the intended Troad or scene 
of the Iliad, though as to the site of the poetical 
city of Troy nothing can be made out. Bryant 



TREATISE OK HOMER. 61 

thinks that the true Troad is south of the Sigseum, 
from VirgiFs authority, " Est in conspectu Tene- 
dos," which can be seen distinctly from the plain 
south, but not from that east of the Sigseum. The 
increased distance of Troy from the coast may be 
accounted for by the accretion of land caused by 
the mud, &c. carried down by the Scamander, 
though to this opinion the rapid current of the 
Hellespont, which would prevent it, is opposed. 
But all these objections taken from the site of 
Troy are easily overturned by this consideration, 
that in a poem it is not at all necessary that the 
description should minutely correspond with the 
actual localities. Is not the poet allowed to add 
extent to his plain, and magnificence to his town I 
Does any one endeavour to identify all Tasso's 
descriptions with the topography of the Holy 
Land? But to those who fancy they perceive 
the operations of more hands than one in the 
poem, these petty discrepancies of place and 
quality, as the city in the plain and the city on the 
hill, the river clear and the river turbid, seem a 
natural consequence and a probable proof of their 
theory. A fourth argument is drawn from the 
epithet nXarvg, applied to the Hellespont ; but 
Homer evidently treated it as a river running into 
the iEgean ; to this supposition the epithet 
cry ufjpooQ, vehemently flowing, corresponds ;* Vir- 
gil's " Sigsea igni freta lata relucent," may be com- 
pared : the motion that irXarvg is used in this place 
for salt, is absurd." Kennedy thinks that Homer took 
in with the Hellespont a portion of the iEgean. 

From Wood on the Troade. 

4. A straight line drawn from the Cajcus to the 
' iEsopus, would nearly describe the eastern and 

• Herodotus actually calls it a river, and Orpheus also calls 

I it ttXXTVf. 



62 TREATISE ON HOMBR. 

inland boundary of Priam's dominion ; its circum- 
ference includes about 500 English miles, of which 
above 200 afford a maritime coast washed by the 
Propontis, Hellespont, and iEgean Seas. Few 
spots of the same extent enjoy more natural advan- 
tages. 

5. Though well adapted for trade and naviga- 
tion, it was a principle of their civil and religious 
constitution to discourage both, and to favour a 
taste for agriculture. They had an old prophetic 
admonition amongst them against the dangers of 
commerce, and their laws treated with peculiar 
severity those who were convicted of stealing an 
ox or ploughshare, or any implement of husbandry. 
Navigation and piracy being then synonymous, it 
was natural for a people abounding with flocks, 
corn, wine, oil, and all the comforts of life, to 
avoid an intercourse by which they might gain 
little and lose much. Their fate justified their 
fears, for they were thrice conquered and plundered 
before the time of Homer, their riches being the 
temptation, which also was probably the motive 
of the iEolic migration. 

6. Cape Janissari, the ancient Sigseum, divides 
the iEgean Sea from the Hellespont ; from this 
Cape the flat marshy shore retires, forming a beau- 
tiful curved plane, which is terminated eastward 
by Cape Barbieri, the ancient Rhgeteum ; through 
this plain the Scamander discharges itself into the 
sea, and Dardanium must have been near this 
spot, as the strait is still called Dardanelles. 

7. The iEgean and Hellespont are always kept 
distinct in Homer, different epithets being applied 
to each. Thus, first book, Chryses returns along 
the boisterous sea ; the situation of Chrysa shows 
it is the iEgean, and the epithet corresponds. The 
term would be as applicable to the Danube as to 
the Hellespont ; it has not breadth enough to be 
boisterous. So insmiens applied to the Bosphorus 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 63 

in Horace, does not mean boisterous, but happily 
-describes the contrariety of currents, for which it 
is remarkable. Again in first book, Achilles retires 
to indulge his resentment to the frothy beach, and 
looks over the dusky main; the epithets corres- 
pond with the Mge&n, near to which he was 
stationed. The Hellespont also is distinguished 
by epithets adapted to that straight only, or pointed 
out by the circumstances of the camp and fleet in 
its vicinity. 

8. The description given by Homer of Mount 
Ida corresponds with its present state. Its many 
summits are still covered with pines, and it abounds 
with fountains ; of these pines Paris and iEneas 
built their fleets, and iEneas could not have 
chosen a spot more proper for the purpose, than 
-Antandros at the foot of Ida ; the road to it was 
the most secure, and the place itself the safest 
from the Grecian fleet, of any on the coast. There 
are, however, two anachronisms in Virgil's ac- 
count : — " Classemque sub ipso." " Antandro, ac 
Phrygise molimur montibus Idse." For Antandros 
•was not yet built, nor was the region of Troas 
then called Phrygia. 

9. Pliny observes, that the rivers mentioned by 
Homer did not answer to the appearances exhibi- 
ted in his time. This change of situation may 
have been occasioned by the earthquakes to which 
the country was subject ; their present situation 
corresponds with that by Strabo ; the hot spring, 
according to Homer, was one of the sources of the 
Scamander ; it is now much lower than the present 
source, which is a rock about twenty-three miles 
from its mouth in a straight line, but far more, if 
the many windings of the river be taken into ac- 
count. The fountains, whence the river took its 
rise, were, according to Homer, close to the walls 
of the city, but the ground near the present source 



64 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

is much too steep and rugged for the situation of 
a city, and could not accord with the pursuit of 
Hector and other incidents in the poem, and also 
is too distant from the Hellespont to admit of the 
actions of the day, (though the city must have been 
some distance from the shore, for, as the Grecian 
camp and ships could not be seen from it, it was 
necessary to send Polites to the tomb of iEsyetes, 
to reconnoitre the enemy). From its fountain 
head to Chiflik, it rather tumbles than flows 
through a rocky channel ; from thence to the 
ruined bridge, it glides through a rich plain to 
Ene, a considerable village, where there is a wooden 
bridge over it ; here it 'receives the Simois ; and 
from thence to Bornabaschi, their united course is 
through a rocky mountainous country. Borna- 
baschi, where there is a fine rivulet, signifies the 
fountain head, and seems to be the site of Troy. 
At Bornabaschi commences the plain which reaches 
to the Hellespont ; of this a great part has been 
produced since Homer's time, by the accretion of 
soil and mud lodged at the mouth of the Scaman- 
der, as Egypt has been enlarged by the Nile, and 
the regions near the Maeander and Cayster by 
those rivers. The Scamander is very low in the 
dry season, and swollen greatly in the rainy season, 
as appears by the breadth of its channel, and the 
length of its three bridges. A less army than that of 
Xerxes might exhaust it in the dry season. These 
opposite states of the Scamander are noticed by 
Homer — in the former state a fallen tree is de- 
scribed as reaching from one of its banks to the 
other ; in the latter it is employed as an effectual 
power for the total demolition of the Greek en- 
trenchment. 

10. The Grecian camp occupied the whole of 
the sea-coast before the city. This appears from 
the number of the forces — 100,000 men, many 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 65 

women, many children, horses and chariots ; the 
ships which were drawn up, and secured on the 
land among the tents ; the great entrenchment in 
front of the camp, and a space between the camp 
and the sea, sufficient for assembling the principal 
officers on matter of moment ; one extremity 
reached to the Sigean promontory, where Achilles 
was stationed ; the other to the Rhsetean, where 
Ajax had pitched his tent, Ulysses being in the 
centre, as being the most convenient place for 
consultation. In his ship Agamemnon assembled 
the chiefs, that his voice might be heard at either 
extremity, a distance of six miles. 

11. To supply themselves with provisions, the 
Greeks were obliged to send a part of their army 
to cultivate the Thracian Chersonese ; this decrease 
of their forces protracted the siege. In the inter- 
val they plundered various towns ; Achilles plun- 
dered twelve maritime and eleven inland towns. 



CHAPTER VI. 



INTRODUCTION TO THE ILIAD. 



1. The Iliad, with the exception of the Penta- 
teuch, and some other books of the Old Testament, 
is the most ancient composition known. There is 

food proof that it is older than the Odyssey, than 
lesiod, and than those poems ascribed by the an- 
cients to Orpheus and Musseus, but which were 
probably, for the most part, produced during the 
interval between the Homeric age and the dynasty 
of Pisistratus. 

2. A book so ancient should be read with pa- 
tience, a simple mind, and something of the kind 
of reverence which we yield to the Hebrew Gene- i 
sis ; it may be considered as the secular bible of 
mankind. 



Manners and Morals. 

3. The manners of the Iliad are the manners of j 
the patriarchal and early ages of the East. The 
chief differences arise from a different religion and 
a more maritime situation. The hero and patri- 
arch are substantially coeval, but the first wanders 
in twilight, the last stands in the eye of heaven. 

4. Instances. First, Abraham's hospitality to 
the angels (Gren. xviii. 1), is similar to Achilles's, to 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 67 

Ajax, Ulysses, and Phoenix, (II. ix. 193.) Second, 
Achilles sits down to eat, (ix. 218), and the sons 
of Jacob sat before Joseph, (Gen. xliii. 33), the 
practice of reclining being as yet unknown. Third, 
the husband gave the marriage portion, and not 
the wife (which afterwards was the custom), thus 
Agamemnon offers one of his daughters to Achilles 
without exacting a dowry from him, (ix. 146), and 
Abraham's servant gave presents to Rebekah, (Gen. 
xxiv. 22), Shechem offered a dowry to Jacob for 
Dinah, (Gen. xxxiv. 12), and Saul said he did not 
desire any dowry from David for Michal, (1 Sam. 
xviii. 25.) Fourth, Rachel, the daughter of Laban, 
a great man, kept her father's sheep, (Gen. xxix. 
6), the seven daughters of Reuel, the priest of 
Midian, watered their father's flock, (Ex. ii. 16), 
Saul was coming after the herd, when they told 
him the tidings of the men of Jabesh, (1 Sam. xi. 
5), so Bucolion, the son of Laomedon, was a shep- 
herd, (vi. 25), also Antiphus, son of Priam, (xi. 
106), and iEneas himself, (xx. 91.) Fifth, to sac- 
rifice with unwashed hands is unlawful, (vi. 265, 
and Ex. xxi. 20.) Sixth, manslaughter is redeem- 
able by exile and a fine, (ix. 628, and Num. xxxv. 
6.) Seventh, in computing time, the third or any 
future day is always reckoned inclusively, (ix. 363, 
and Lev. xii. 3.) Eighth, a newborn child is said 
to fall between the feet of its mother, (xix. 110, 
and Deut. xxviii. 57.) Ninth, Hector sacrificed 
to Jupiter on the summit of Ida, (xxii. 170, and 
Deut. xii. 2.) Tenth, stoning was the Trojan 
punishment for adultery, (iii. 57, and John viii. 5.) 
Eleventh, oxen are used to tread out corn, (xx. 
495, and Deut. xxv. 4.) Twelfth, female captives 
are the peculiar prizes of the generals and chiefs, 
(i. 118, and Judges v. 30.) Thirteenth, to lie 
without burial was the worst aggravation of defeat 
and death, (i. 4, and Deut. xxviii. 26.) Thus the 



68 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

Old Testament and the Iliad reflect light mutually , 
on each other. 

5. The Iliad and Odyssey represent the age of . 
chivalry of the Greeks, but it is a chivalry with 
little reverence for women, and no point of honour : 
analogous only, and not like in itself to modern 
chivalry. 

6. The morals and manners of the Homeric r 
heroes belong to the second stage of a people 
working out its own civilization under very fa- 
vourable conditions of time, place, and physical ', 
temperament. First, the age of brutal violence J 
has passed or is passing away, and a deep sense of 
the power and providence of the gods has become 1 
universal. The Sc unSaipovia, or attribution of every } 
great event to an agency more than human, is a 5 
primary characteristic of such an age.* Second, , 
veracity in the Homeric scheme, is rather a token , 
of power and boldness than a moral duty ; ends, 
and not means, being the standards to which 
Homeric manners and morals are to be referred. 
To gain their point was the grand consideration 
with heroes and deities, honour was out of the 
question, and so close was the overruling agency of 
the gods, that success alone qualified the event and 
justified the means. Thus, the reading in second 
book, which makes Jupiter promise victory to , 
Agamemnon, is the geuuine one, though censured 
by Plato ; the ovXog oveipog being a lying spirit, 
which Jupiter commissioned to work out his own 
will. The Kiivog, in the 308 and 309 lines of II. 
ix. may be taken generally, as Achilles, the hero 
of force, could afford to speak his mind on most ; 
occasions ; but it may mean Agamemnon, and the 



* This was liable to be overborne by blind appetite or violent 
emotion, as in the case of Ajax in the temple of Minerva, and 
Hector's disregard for Auguries, th •>«»»«, &c. 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 69 

lines convey an insinuation, that all his fine offers 
and speeches were insincere. Third, though the 
marriage of one man to one woman was firmly 
established, concubinage was without shame, and 
;he tenderest language of respect might be applied 
:o a mistress ; the wife was left at home, and the 
nistress was a companion on the expedition, where 
she acted partly as a servant. This corresponds 
vith Abraham having Sarah and Hagar, and 
Facob having Leah, Rachel, and their handmaids ; 
jo even Nestor and Ulysses had mistresses. Fourth, 
■obbing and plundering were not only practised, 
Dut even held in honour. 

7. The present manners of the Arabs are very 
similar to those of the patriarchal day, and of the 
Homeric age. The stability of manners in Arabia 
las arisen from the nature of the country, consist- 
ng of extensive deserts, where neither commerce 
lor strangers would be introduced. The only ex- 
ception that ever occurred to this, was the magni- 
icent city of Palmyra: its origin and increase 
irose from the possession of a fountain, which 
tfForded a resting-place in the desert between the 
Euphrates and the cultivated parts of Syria on the 

S?a-coast ; it thus commanded the passage of the 
esert, and held the balance of commerce and 
|>ower between the eastern and western worlds ; 
t is now in ruins, and the manners of the Arabs 
Ire still unchanged ; they despise architecture and 
tariculture, and lead a rambling pastoral life, 
weeding cattle, and robbery being their profession, 
ben. xvi. 12.) 

! 8. The conformity of style and sentiment between 
lomer and the early sacred writers, may be ac- 
|ounted for from the proximity of time and country, 
nd it is not necessary to suppose with some, that 
lomer acquired a knowledge of the Jewish learn- 
pg through the Egyptian priests. 

i 



70 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

9. Wood reduces the points of resemblance be- 
tween the ancient Greek and Jewish, and the 
present Arabian manners, to six. First, dissimu- 
lation and diffidence prevail much. Second, cruelty, 
violence, and injustice prevail. Third, a general' , 
spirit of hospitality prevails. Fourth, female'* 
society is wanting, and a disgusting and licentious^ 
style of pleasantry takes its place. Fifth, the lowest | 
domestic duties are performed by persons of the 
highest rank. Sixth, the general turn of wit and 1 -- 
humour is either insipid or indelicate. This simi- 
larity of manners may arise either from the nature 
of soil and climate, or from defective eastern legist 
lation. First, all public confidence is destroyed* 
by the despotism of the east : Ulysses would form 
a perfect model for those who wish to make their 1 
way in it securely ; but instances of private friend-' 
ship abound, not inferior to those of Pylades and' 
Orestes, Achilles and Patroclus, David and Jona-; 
than. Seeond, the natural result of defective gov- 
ernment. In Homer the murderer endeavours to ! 
escape, not public justice, but the revenge of the 
relatives of the deceased. Third, from the same{ 
cause, it is the happy substitution of positive lawy 
and supplies the place of justice. Fourth, female 
subordination is strongly marked in the Iliad and 1 
Odyssey ; the only instance of pure and delicate 
love is that of Hector and Andromache, yet Hee^ 
tor's answer, ^ koi Ijuoi raBt iravra juieXh, yvvat: 
and aXX dg oikov Iowa is rough and indelicate" 
And the whole behaviour of Telemachus to Pene 
lope reminds us of the Athenian law, which coil 
stituted the son the guardian of the mother 
Virgil's Dido is very superior to Homer's Calypso- 
in tenderness and delicacy of sentiment ; tHi 
arose from the different manners of the times, am 
not from any insufficiency in Homer, 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 



Mythology. 



10. Avery Important point in Homeric mythology 
is, that the will of Jupiter appears to be absolute. 
No distinct empire is assigned to fate or fortune. 
That dark and vindictive destiny, which in various 
degrees, overshadows the plots of the three tragic 
poets, forms no part of the mythology of the Iliad; 
the word ri>xn does not occur once in the whole 
poem, and the phrases fiotpa Kparairj, virep juo/oov, 
Trenptjfjitvov aioy, perhaps mean no more than the 
fate or issue decreed by Jupiter to individuals and 
things, and refer not to a predestination inde- 
pendent of his will. In the passage, II. vi. 434?, 
where Jupiter laments to Juno the approaching 
death of Sarpedon, it is clear from both speakers, 
that though Sarpedon is said to be fated to die, 
Jupiter might still, if he pleased, save him, and 
should he not, that Jupiter himself would destroy 
him by the hands of another. A similar scene, in 
almost the same words, occurs on the occasion of 
Hector's death, II. xxii. 168. And in like manner, 
the oracular response, which Eustathius quotes 
from iElian, expressly identifies Motpa with the 
Aibg (5ov\rj, II. vi. 487; though this opinion is 
disputed, and though we may admit in Homer a 
fate connected with men and things in a subordi- 
nate sense, and that fate to proceed from a source 
distinct from the will of Jove, still no one will 
deny, that the supremacy of Jupiter in the Iliad is 
more, strongly marked than in the later poets of 
Greece. This appears from the tone of the cele- 
brated address in the beginning of the eighth 
book. Still the supremacy of Jupiter comes far 
short of almighty power. Achilles intimates that 
he owed his liberty on one occasion to Briareus, 



72 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

i. 396, though he himself asserts his own omnipo- 
tence very confidently, viii. 5, and defies all oppo- 
sition, even if strengthened by the force of the 
subdued and exiled Titans, viii. 478 : there is 
much imperfection in the representation of his 
character ; on the whole, he seems to be the su- 
preme and despotic chief of an aristocracy of 
weaker divinities. 

11. Herodotus says, that the Greek Theogony 
was the invention of Homer and Hesiod ; it is 
more probable that they adopted a received my- 
thology, enlarged, adorned, and systematized it. 

12. The rudiments of the Homeric mythology | 
came originally from the east, through the channels 
of Egypt and Phenicia, the mothers of science and 
superstition, and they were constructed on the 
obvious principle of separating the attributes of 
the supreme deity, and assigning to each a name 
and a personal divinity. Idolatry was unknown in 
Homer's time. Though the temple of Minerva at 
Athens, and of Apollo at Delphi (then called 
Pytho) existed, yet sacrifices, in which the sum 
of religion consisted, were performed on altars 
raised in the open air. The Fates were the only 
deities supposed incapable of doing wrong. 

13. From the superstitious credulity and imper- 
fect civilization of the times, on the score of 
probability alone, the intervention of the super- 
natural was required for the allowance and conduct 
of so fateful an event as the fall of Troy ; hence, 
the gods in the Iliad are never " Dii ex machinis," 
they are providential and governing, they prepare 
the conflict, mature the crisis, and strike with or 
even anticipate the blow of the hero. The heroes, 
however, are not dwarfed by their protectors, they 
are rather by the association raised to demigods, 
they are not so much helped by the gods as fight 
in their company. The difference even in the 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 73 

Odyssey is discernible, in the iEneid the mythology 
is little else than ornamental, and in the Pharsalia 
there is none at all. 

14. Many ancient and modern writers have 
supposed that the whole supernatural machinery 
of the Iliad is allegorical and figurative, and had 
no real existence in the intention of the poet. 
This supposition is inconsistent with the popular 
belief in the actual being of the divinities intro- 
duced, and with the graphic spirit of the poem. 
The body, colour, locality, and motion of Homer's 
deities demand a temporary faith in their personal 
agencies, and there are passages which cannot bear 
an allegorical interpretation ; in some instances, 
however, the representation is allegorical. The 
celebrated description of Xirai, prayers, ix. 491, of 
"Attj, strife, and the mention of sleep and death as 
twins, xvi. 672, are surely allegories, a personifica- 
tion very different from the ordinary presentment 
of Pallas and Mars. In the fight of the gods, 
where Neptune is opposed to Apollo, Minerva to 
Mars,. Juno to Diana, Vulcan to Scamander, the 
i respective attributes are clearly put forward in an 
| unusual manner, and the mythology is reduced to 
jits first elements. On the whole, a continued alle- 
gorical interpretation is unreasonable, but in par- 
ticular instances certain characteristic qualities 
seem to be simply personified for the purposes of 
poetry. 

15. The question of allegorical intention in the 
Iliad has given rise to much discussion and dispute ; 
this might have been avoided, had the distinction 
been observed between the origin of the Greek 

faythi and the use made of them by the poets : 
he origin was allegorical, the use by no means. ^ 

16. The opinions expressed to the contrary by 
jseveral eminent writers, from Plato down to the 
(Commencement of the Christian sera, are the result 

E 



74 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

of philosophical zeal ; the Stoics and Pythago- 
reans being determined that the old heroic poetry 
should teach physics and the divine government of 
the world, the Epicureans showing better taste in 
leaving the Olympian deities to themselves. 

17. The elaborate systems of interpretation of 
Iamblickus and Porphyry were directed to the 
single object of defending the old Paganism against 
the attacks of the Christian writes, The Christian 
fathers, particulary Origen and Clement of Alex- 
andria, admitted the allegorical origin of the 
mythi, but said that the mass of mankind took 
them in their immediate sense ; and even if the 
system were still understood as allegorical, it was 
indefensible after the light of Christianity had 
dawned upon the world. I 

18. The origin of the Greek mythology was 
therefore figurative ; its foundation was partly phy- 
sical, partly historical ; the physical part was^ 
earlier, preceding the usurpation of Jupiter, and, 
was properly a cosmogony, or history of the creation 
of the material universe, in which the part* 
and powers of nature were personified. In thfy 
historical interpretation the earliest Greek history 
is shadowed forth. Uranus or Heaven, reigned it] 
Thessaly, he was expelled by Saturn and the Ti-, 
tans ; he swallowed his children, but Jupiter, Pluto-! 
and Neptune, releasing the three imprisonet. 
Titans, Cottus, Gyges, and Briarcus, dethrone^ 
Saturn. Jupiter became master of Olympus anc 
Thessaly, Pluto of Epirus, a tract rich in minee, 
Neptune of the sea and islands. The three dynae r 
ties of Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter, are twic 
distinctly marked by JEschylus, Prom. Vine. 96^ 
Agam. 176. 

19. The historical mode of interpretation coi > 
responds with the system of Euhemerus ; he \ 
a" philosopher sent by Cassander, king of Macedoi 



TREATISE ON HOMER, 75 

j to make a voyage of discovery in the Eastern 
i Ocean, on his return he published a book called 
| itpa avaypcHpi), Sacred History. He said he touched 
' at an island called Panchaia, in the capital of 

which, Panara, he found in a temple of Jupiter, a 
| register of the births and deaths of many of the 

Olympian deities, incribed on a golden column 
j placed there by Jupiter himself. His system was, 
I that the popular deities, Saturn, Jupiter, &c. were 
I mere mortal men, raised to the rank of gods on 
i account of the benefits they had conferred on, or 
j the power they had acquired amongst, mankind. 
j Virgil alludes to this, " Totaque thuriferis Pan- 
1 chaia pinguis aTonis." 

20. The deities of Jupiter's race are chiefly 
moral figures. Jupiter married Metis, counsel, and 
then devoured her, and brought forth himself 
Minerva, practical wisdom ; then he married The- 
mis, justice, and by her had Eunomia, Dice, and 
Irene, good order, right, and peace ; then he mar- 

] j ried Mnemosyne, memory, and had the muses. 

21. The mysterious knowledge which Homer is 
'supposed to conceal under allegory, has been traced 
[ to his Egyptian education, but Egypt appears 

(though civilized before Greece) never to have risen 
above mediocrity in the arts of war or peace. 
The Egyptians have left no literary works, though 
papyrus was the produce of their country ; their 
hieroglyphics were the production of an infant 
fitate of society, not yet acquainted with alpha- 
betical writing, and have been preserved by the 
dryness of the atmosphere, whilst those of other 
nations have perished. In architecture, sculpture, 
and painting, the Greeks were original, and took 
their ideas from nature. The pyramids, obelisks, 
&c. of Egypt were unmeaning, inelegant, and use- 
less. Pythagoras and Thales studied mathematics 
m Egypt* and yet the knowledge they acquired 

i 2 



76 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

there could not have been great, as appears from 
their joy in discovering the 47th Prop, of the 1 st 
book of Euclid, and how to inscribe a right angled 
triangle in a circle. Though they were enabled to 
place the pyramids so as to correspond with the 
four cardinal points of the compass, yet it was 1 
Thales who taught them to measure their height ] 
by their shadow. Homer was studied more in 
Egypt than in any other country, but T it was by 
Greeks; its temperature, climate, fertility of soil, and 
situation in the tract of the East India trade, 
whilst they account for its antiquity, population, 
and wealth, are not favourable to genius, to great 
efforts, and happy exertions of mind or body. 

22. Homer derived his system of theology and 
mythology from an accurate observation of nature, 
under the direction of a fine imagination and a 
sound understanding. 

23. He believed in the unity, supremacy, om- 
nipotence, and omniscience of the Creator ; his 
power, wisdom, justice, mercy, aud truth are incul- 
cated in various places ; the immortality of the soul, 
a future state, of rewards and punishments, &e. 
are to be found in the Iliad. When he dishonoured 
his deities with the weakness and passions of 
human nature, he was submitting to the opinions 
and superstitions of the vulgar, whom he wa# 
obliged to conciliate. Plato censures him for this 

24. When his personages are most ideal, mV 
scenery is real Grecian, and the Ionian point or 
view predominates, the laws of time and place aw 
observed, and this gives an air of probability t< 
the wildest excursions of fancy. Thus the journiej 
of Neptune and Juno to assist the Trojans, ma^ 
be traced along the map. Whilst Jupiter is oi 
txargara, the summit of Ida, looking toward 
Mysia, away from the scene of war, Neptune goe 
from Samothrace to iEgos for his armour, am 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 77 

then puts up his chariot and horses between 
Imbros and Tenedos. Juno goes from Olympus 
to Athos, thence to Lemnos, where she engages 
in her interest the god of sleep ; thence to Imbros, 
thence to Lectum, a promontory of Ida, then leav- 
ing the sea, to Gargara ; all these places can be 
taken in from Ida and other situations in Asia 
Minor, but not from any situation in European 
i Greece — an argument for the Asiatic origin of the 
I poem. 

25. The picturesque wildness which appears to 
ja spectator in Asia Minor, when the sun sets 
I behind the cloud-capped mountains of Macedonia 
jfind Thessaly, may have suggested the idea of the 

war of the Titans with the gods. Homer places 
the mountains correctly, not so Virgil, who pro- 
bably never saw them. 

"Oo-trav £7r' SvAujUTrtj) jmifxaeav difiev, avrap In 'Oarer}, 
riTjAiov tlvoatyvXkoV) ly pypayug afj.fiaTog tit}. 

Odys. xi. 314 
Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam, 
'Scilicet, atque Ossse frondosum involvere Olym- 
pum. Georg. i. 281. 

Homer's order is Olympus, Ossa, Pelion ; Vir- 
gil's, Pelion, Ossa, Olympus. 

26. The geographical disposition of Latium was 
not so favourable to fabulous adventures as that 
of Greece, where a most pleasing mixture of land 
and water gave a wonderful succession of scenery. 
When Homer would surprise his audience with 
something strange, he carried them to the un- 

5 frequented coast of Italy ; this in Virgil's time was 

Jtoo well known to be the scene of fable. Circe's 

Island was in his neighbourhood, and the country 

of the Lsestrygones among the gardens of the 

fiBoman nobility. 



78 TREATISE ON HOMER. 



On the plan or primary argument of the Iliad. 

27. Many critics discover an exquisiteness of 
artifice in the plan of the poem, which probably [ 
was never suspected by the author. In an age, 
when the only mode of publication was by reciting 
at feasts, it is difficult to conceive an adequate 
motive for the minstrel bards constructing a poem 
of 15,000 lines, (of which only a very small portion 
could be recited at once), with such minute care 
for a beginning, middle, and end, as is said to be j 
apparent in the Iliad. 

28. The division of the poem into twenty-four > 
books, corresponding with the letters of the alpha- t 
bet, (which however was the work of Aristarchus, 
and effected in a very arbitrary manner ;) and the i 
fact of Aristotle's deducing his rules for the epic, 
poem from the Iliad and Odyssey, and proposing 
them as complete and perfect models, have given 
rise to and confirmed this opinion of the critics. 

29. Seneca says, that Apion, a grammarian of/ 
the age of Caligula, maintained that Homer him- 
self made this division, and in proof of it, relied" 
upOn the first word of the Iliad, M?}vtv, the first i 
two letters of which signify forty-eight, the number^ 
of the books of the Iliad and Odyssey. He add?, 
" Talia sciat oportet, qui multa vult scire." 

30. Some inconsistencies appear throughout the 
work. Thus Pylsemenes, chief of the Paphlagonians,^ 
is killed by Menelaus and Antilochus, v. 576 ; and 
in xiii. 650, Harpalion, his son, is killed by Me-; 
riones, and Pykemenes, in propria persona, accom-: 
panies the body of his son, shedding tears of: 
sorrow. In x. 447, Diomede and Ulysses meet a: 
man in the dark, whom they address by name, 
without Tiis having mentioned it ; it may, however.rj 
be replied, that Dolon being son of a herald, 



TREATISE ON HOMEH. 79 

liimself a wealthy man, was previously known to 
them. In xviii. 192, Achilles says that the armour 
of none of the chiefs will suit him except the shield 
of Ajax, and yet the armour of Patroclus should 
have fitted him, as his did Patroclus. 

31. The objection to the generally received 
opinion of the siiVject of the poem, which seems to 
be proposed by- the poet himself, and which Cole- 
ridge adopts, and which is " the anger of Achilles," 
is, that on this hypothesis the poem should termi- 
nate on the reconciliation of Achilles and Aga- 
memnon ; and thus, all that exceeds the beginning 
of the eighteenth book, is redundant. The German 
critics adopting this argument, and finding this 
redundancy, rejected it as spurious ; and the work 
of rejection commenced, book after book was pro- 
nounced an interpolation, until the whole work 
was divided between several authors, all equally 
unknown. 

32. Coleridge answers this objection, by saying 
that the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon 
will legitimately include the act of reconciliation 
between them, and all its immediate consequences. 
The importance of the quarrel as a subject of a 
poem, consisted in its disastrous results ; it was 
therefore no more than right, to show that the 
quarrel had caused the evils, by showing that the 
reconciliation had cured them. 

33. He thinks also that the presumption of the 
necessity of a preconceived plan, exactly commen- 
surate with the extent of the poem, is founded on 
a thorough misconception of the history and 
character of early heroic poetry ; and is deduced 
from an analogy with the artificial contexture of 
the drama in its finished state : impassioned and 
varied narration, together with a certain consistency 
of character, being the paramount requisite in the 
first essays of national poetry. The intricacy of 



80 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

the modern epics would be useless, as fragments 
only were presented at a time to the audience. 
From the first to the last line of the poem, the 
whole is narratio directa,* a straight and onward 
tale ; the speeches of Nestor and Phoenix, shield 
of Achilles, &c. not being parentheses, as they are 
commonly called, but parts and acts of the story 
itself. 

34. Penn makes the primary argument of the 
Iliad to be the Aidg fiovXrj, or will of Jove, in 
working the death and burial of Hector, by the 
instrumentality of Achilles, (notwithstanding his 
opposition), as an immediate preliminary to the 
destruction of Troy. By removing the parenthesis 
in which the words Atbg Sg reXdero fiovXr), are 
usually inclosed, he says that the proem or intro- 
duction embraces two distinct propositions, con- 
nected by the adversative particle Si ; that the 
fxrjviQ 'AxtXrioQ in the first clause is opposed by the 
A toe povXij in the • second, and in such a manner 
as to denote the superiority of the latter. The 
will of Achilles would seem frequently to oppose 
the will of Jupiter, but is always forced to yield. 
Thus the argument of the Iliad is intended to 
display " the irresistible power of the divine will 
over the most determined will of man,*" as that of 
the Odyssey, the power of man's will over every 
opposing difficulty. 

35. On this hypothesis the Iliad corresponds 
with Aristotle\s rules, and also with his judgment 
concerning the poem : it is engaged with one 
action, it is in itself a one, entire, and perfect 
whole, possessing those essential qualities of unity 
and entireness, a beginning, a middle, and an end. 
The anger of Achilles and its effects are the 'A/o^*/, 

• The poem of the Cid, the most ancient monument of 
Castilian poetry, is also mere history or chronicle. 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 81 

or beginning ; the death of Patroclus, where the 
will of Jupiter first shows its superiority over the 
will of man, is the fiiaov, or middle ; and the death 
of Hector and his funeral, in which the Atoc 
/pouXr) is accomplished, is the end. The main 
action of the Iliad is single and simple, fiia teal 
«7rXouc? always directed to one point, viz. the 
bringing an honourable death and burial on Hector 
by the instrumentality of Achilles. That of the 
Odyssey is complicated, tending not only to the 
prosperity of Ulysses, but also to the destruction 
of the suitors ; and the argument of the Iliad is 
exactly co-extensive with the length of the poem. 

36. Coleridge objects to this hypothesis — that it 
takes the two last lines and a half of the prcemium 
out of the invocation, and makes them a mere 
assertion of the poet's ; that the interpretation it 
proposes of the passage is harsh and foreign to the 
obvious construction ; that it is a singular instance 
of involution and obscurity in a writer so plain and 
simple ; that though the interpretation it proposes 
be true, still the subject of the song should seem 
to be that which the muse is invoked to sing, viz. 
the anger of Achilles. 



Character of the Poetry. 

37. The characteristics of the poem are truth, 
good sense, rapidity, and variety, bodied forth into 
shape by a vivid imagination, and borne on the 
wings of an inimitable versification. The phrase, 
" forceful liveliness," will express the excellence of 
the Homeric poetry as well as any other. There 
are not many passages in the Iliad, which can be 
properly called sublime ; the grandest of those few 
is the description of the universal horror and 

E 3 

I 



82 TRRATISE ON HOMER. 

tumult attending on the battle of the gods, xx. 
47. It is superior to the Titanian battle in the 
Theogonia. 

38. The Homeric shield of Achilles, the Hesiodic 
(not Hesiod's) shield of Hercules, and Virgil's 
shield of iEneas, (which is little more than an 
epitome of Roman history in compliment to Augus- 
tus), are the three most famous shields ever forged 
by the armourers of Parnassus. 

39. Flaxman and Pitts have proved the pos- 
sibility of representing in metal, within the circum- 
ference of a shield, all the images in the Homeric 
description. The shield of Achilles contained a 
picture of the social and material world ; on the 
boss were the sun, moon, and stars ; on the cir- 
cumference the ocean, the intermediate circle 
divided into compartments, in which peace and 
war were represented in various aspects ; first, a 
city at peace, containing a bridal procession, then 
a trial in the forum, next a city beleagured, then 
the various scenes of agricultural life follow ; first, [ 
the ploughman, then the reapers, then the vintage, 
then a picture of pasture, lastly, the Pyrrhic dance. 
In the centre of the Hesiodic shield was a serpent/ 
on the rim, the ocean with swans and fishes ; in 8 
the intermediate circle, first, a fight of lions and* 
boars, then the battle of the Centaurs and LapithaeJ 
then Apollo playing on his lyre among the gods,,* 
then an arm of the sea, with dolphins and a fisher- 
man, then Perseus, a detached figure, with Me- 
dusa's head at his back, followed by the other 
Gorgons, then a besieged city, with Clotho, Laehe- 
sis, Atropos, and Achlys, the dimness of death, 
then a city at peace, full of festivals, then reaping, 
vintaging, boxing, hare-huntings and the chariot 
race. The imagery is similar in both, but the 
images succeed each other in consecutive order in 
the Homeric. The Hesiodic images are huddled 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 83 

together without connection or congruity. In the 
description of scenes of rustic peace, the superiority 
of Homer is decisive. In those of war and tumult, 
the Hesiodic poet has more than once the advan- 
tage. A taste of unerring purity reigns through 
the Homeric description, the same cannot be said 
of the other. 

40. The work entitled the contest of Homer and 
Hesiod, 'Ofiripov kcu Ho-toSou ay&v, was written 
about the first half of the second century, as 
Adrian, who reigned from A.D. 117 to 138, is 
mentioned in it by name. It says that the judge 
Panoides awarded the prize to Hesiod, contrary 
to the voice of the whole assembly, because Hesiod 
exhorted men to peace and Homer to war ; hence, 
the expression Uavo&ov ^r)$oc, became proverbial 

i for an absurd judgment. 

41. One of the most beautiful passages in the 
Iliad, is that which describes Minerva arming her- 
self for battle, v. 733, &c. Eustathius says the 

I ancient critics marked it with an asterisk, to 
denote its beauty. The announcement by Antilo- 
chus to Achilles of the death of Patroclus, has- 
been pointed out by Quinctilian as an instance of 
the perfection of energetic brevity, xviii . 20. The 
scene between Achilles and Priam, xxiv. 486, is 
the most profoundly skilful, and yet the simplest 
and most affecting passage in the Iliad. 



Characters of the Poem. 

42. The characters of the Iliad are admirable 

for their variety and distinctness ; they are not so 

$ fully developed, or contrasted with each other, as 

3 in the drama, but they serve for conducting and 

: animating the action of the poem. It would be 



84 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

inconsistent with the plan of a modern epic, as the 
-flSneid or Jerusalem delivered, to introduce so 
many warriors nearly equal in personal prowess, 
but in the Iliad they all move at large, and play 
the hero in turn, their distinct characters being 
always observed. The passion and ferocity of 
Achilles, the modesty and constancy of Diomede, 
the animal courage of Ajax, the courtliness of 
Ulysses, the generosity, kindness, and rashness of 
Hector, and the gentlemanly gallantry of Sarpe- 
don, are very remarkable. The epithet nzaaiwokioQ 
(half grey), distinguishes Idomeneus, who in other 
respects is the least prominent among the chiefs ; 
and Phoenix differs from Nestor, as an old man in 
private life from a veteran statesman. It is in- 
teresting to observe, how the same hand that has 
given us the fury and inconsistency of Achilles, 
gives us also the consummate elegance and tender- 
ness of Helen; she is always the genuine lady, grace- 
ful in motion and speech, noble in her associations, 
full of remorse for a fault for which higher powers 
seem responsible, yet grateful and affectionate 
towards those with whom that fault had connected 
her. The lines, (xxiv. 762,) in which she laments 
Hector, and hints at her own invidious and unpro- 
tected situation in Troy, are perhaps the sweetest 
passage in the poem — a striking instance of that 
refinement of feeling and softness of tone, which 
so generally distinguish the last book of the Iliad 
from the rest. The tragedians have greatly de- 
based the Homeric characters ; on the stage they 
may be Athenians, but are no longer heroes. The 
Agamemnon of iEschylus, and the Ajax of So- 
phocles are exceptions, though these are rather 
equal than similar. Ulysses and Menelaus were 
the worst treated. 



TREATISE ON HOMEF. 85 



Similes. 



43. The similes form a peculiar feature of the 
Iliad. There are more than two hundred of them 
in the Iliad, though not one in the first book. 
The Homeric simile has always a point of simili- 
tude, but beyond that one point, the degrees of 
resemblance vary infinitely. Almost each simile 
is a complete picture in itself ; and often it is not 
easy to catch at a glance the middle point on 
which it is raised ; for though many of them are 
very minute in their correspondence with the cir- 
cumstances of the action, many more of them 
take, as it were, a hint from the occasion, and the 
poet goes on to finish the details of the image, 
which has been accidentally suggested to him. 
Thus, in the simile, II. xii. 278, a beautiful and 
exact picture is given of the snow falling long and 
heavily by the sea- side on a quiet winter day ; but 
the similitude consists merely in the frequent snow 
flakes, and the frequent missiles. Another simile 
of the same kind occurs in II. x. 5, where Aga- 
memnon is described as lying awake in anxious 
meditation ; the point of comparison here also is 
between the quick succession of the drops of rain, 
or hailstones, or snow flakes, and the frequency of 
the groans of the hero. On the other hand, the 
simile in xiii. 137, where Hector rushing from the 
top of the Grecian wall into the intervening plain, 
till he comes close on the phalanx of the Ajaces, 
and then stopping, is compared to a piece of rock, 
loosened by a flood, and rushing from a mountain- 
top to the plain, where it stops, presents a likeness 
in each of its particulars. So also, the beautiful 
simile, xi. 473, where the wounded Ulysses keeps 
the Trojans at bay till Ajax comes to rescue him, 
is exquisitely picturesque, and with the exception 



86 TREATISE OS HOMER. 

of the fate of Ulysses, minutely accurate. Homer, 
in his similes, discovers an accurate observation of 
the habits and appearances of animated nature. In 
the strict and proper sense of the word picturesque, 
viz. the mere description of the inanimate imagery 
of nature, few of the Homeric similes, (as Bishop 
Copleston remarks in his Prselectiones Academieae) 
are pictures in themselves ; though in one sense of 
the word, he is a picturesque writer, inasmuch as 
he brings before the mind's eye the doings of man 
or beast, so that you see them in a picture, and do 
not merely read of them. Nine-tenths indeed of 
his similes are taken from the motions and appear- 
ances of the animal creation — the lion, the bull, 
the boar, the eagle, the serpent, &c. are repeatedly 
introduced in varied aspects of action and repose ; 
and the narrative of the two poems naturally led 
to this selection, on this principle, that we look 
to life for external motion and conflict, and to in- 
animate nature, for representations of mere station, 
form, and colour. Yet even in those similes he 
takes in an accompaniment of objects, marking the 
locality and the season with great clearness and 
harmony, as in the first simile in the Iliad ii. 87 — 
of the bees ; the hollow rock, the everlasting coming 
and going, the grapelike cluster, the spring flowers, 
and the mode of flight and motion, all evidence the 
poet's full sense of the picturesque. Neither of 
Virgil's parallelisms, iEneid i. 430, and vi. 707, 
can be compared to it. The Homeric similes taken 
from inanimate nature are few, but their fidelity is 
perfect, and the point of view and the colouring, 
prove the eye and the hand of a master genius. 
The second and third similes in the Iliad are of 
this class, II. ii. 144, and also that in Iliad viii. 551, 
is remarkable for its beauty and truth ; in the two 
former two distinct movements are illustrated (ac- 
cording to his custom), by two distinct and sue- 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 87 

cessive similes. The French critics think (without 
reason), he ought to have devised one simile for 
both movements. Those who have come nearest 
to Homer, have been the earliest poets of their 
several countries, as Lucretius, Dante, and Chaucer, 
who have painted nature with rival, but original 
hands. In the strict sense of the word, Pindar is 
the most picturesque of the Greeks, and Dante of 
all the moderns. 



Knotdedge of the Arts. 

44. Quinctilian says that the elements of all the 
arts are found in Homer, and what is so intro- 
duced bespeaks the accuracy of personal know- 
ledge. 

45. His geography of Greece and the coasts of 
Asia Minor, is remarkably exact. His descriptions 
of the Troade, though correct, seem to be inci- 
dentally introduced, as being quite familiar. His 
acquaintance with iEgypt and Phoenicia is obvious, 
though probably founded on relation only. Strabo 
has left us a judicious commentary on the geogra- 
phical part of the Iliad and Odyssey. The autho- 
rity of the catalogue was so highly respected, that 
in some cities it was by law enacted, that the youth 
should learn it by heart ; and Solon appealed to it 
in justification of the Athenian claim to Salamis 
against the pretensions of the Megareans ; and the 
five Spartan judges, admitting the nature of the 
evidence, decided in favour of the Athenians. 
Three other litigated cases are said to have been 
determined by reference to this chart. Pope, for 
the purposes of his metre, has introduced several 
epithets, and thus produced several inconsistencies 
and contradictions which are not in the original. 



88 TREATISE ON HOMER. 



Navigation. 

46. He describes the wind, waves, foam, motion, 
and tackle of the ship, with the familiarity and 
fondness of a frequent navigator. The ships of 
that period were galleys, with a single bench of 
oars, and one moveable mast. Thucydides says 
they had no deck, though the vessel built by 
Ulysses in the Odyssey seems to have been half- 
decked at least. The rudder was protected from 
the violence of the waves by a frame of wickerwork. 
No metal bolts, nothing but wooden fastenings. 
The saw is not mentioned among the tools fur- 
nished by Calypso. The trees selected by Ulysses, 
are the alder, poplar, and fir, the very materials of 
which the Turkish and other Levantine ships are 
now constructed. Sounding is not mentioned. The 
anchor, properly so called, was unknown. The 
prow of the vessel was tied by ropes to the shore ; 
if the stay was temporary, the stern of the vessel 
was steadied by letting down heavy stones into the 
water ; these were metaphorically called evval, 
beds ; but when the voyage was over, the vessel 
was drawn up on the shore, with the stern towards 
the land, and supported in an upright position by 
props, or a cradle running lengthwise. A naval 
engagement does not appear to have been known. 
The Boeotian vessels, which carried 120 men, were 
the largest ; those of Philoctetes, carrying 50, the 
smallest; the average would be 85. They were 
rowed and navigated by the troops themselves. If 
the number of ships, according to Thucydides, be 
1,200, (there are but 1,186 in the catalogue), the 
army would amount on the foregoing average to 
302,000 men. The Homeric vessel seems very 
similar to the Indian or African war canoe. Few 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 



countries, of the same extent, have so much sea- 
coast as Greece ; the intercourse of its inhabitants 
was mostly kept up by water. There is no land 
journey regularly described in the Iliad or Odyssey, 
except that short one of Telemachus from Pylos to 
Sparta, and even there Nestor submits to his 
guest the alternative of going by sea, though much 
the longest way. The progress of the different 
states, as maritime powers, did not correspond with 
the account of their shipping, as stated by Homer. 
Thus, Corinth is barely mentioned in the catalogue, 
without any distinction to point out the eminence, 
which, from her situation, she afterwards acquired 
in maritime affairs. When Achilles or Ulysses 
talk of destroying cities with a fleet, the allusion is 
to the numbers, which they carried to act on 
shore ; they confined themselves to timid coasting 
navigation, keeping as little as possible out of sight 
of land. Thus we find Nestor, Diomede, and 
Menelaus, consulting at Lesbos, whether, in re- 
turning to Greece, they should keep the Asiatic 
coast, till they passed Chios, which was the most 
secure, but the most tedious way, or venture 
directly across the open sea, which was the short- 
est, but the most dangerous. (The latter would 
now be the safest ;) they chose the latter, and 
Diomede arrived at Argos, on the fourth day from 
his departure from Troy. Though Homer is sup- 
posed to be indebted to the Phenicians for his 
information with regard to distant voyages, he 
might have derived it from his countrymen, the 
Ionians, who, particularly the Phocceans, (the dis- 
coverers of Adria, Iberia, and Tuscany), and the 
Milesians, (who had founded seventy cities in 
different countries, before the Persian invasion), 
were amongst the earliest navigators. He mentions 
Arabia, Lybia, and ^Ethiopia, and perhaps was 
acquainted with Judaea, The story of Typhon, 



90 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

who was vanquished by Jupiter's thunder, and 
buried in fire and sulphur, is familiar in Greek and 
Roman fable. The poets differ as to the place 
where he was defeated. Wood thinks it was the 
plain of Sodom. The similitude between the Greek 
and Jewish account of the impiety which drew 
down the vengeance, is striking, and Homer and 
Hesiod place the scene of the fable, lv "ApiKoig. 
Josephus, Strabo, and others, make the "Ajchkoi the 
same as the Syrians. There is also a line belong- 
ing to this passage in Homer, not found in the 
MSS. but preserved by Strabo, and corrected by 
Dr. Taylor, which fixes the bed of Typhon m 
Judaea, Xivpu) Ivi Spvoevr 'IovSrjc lv ttlovl Sfj/LUj>. 
This is a slight evidence for Homer's acquaintance 
with Judaea. Virgil carries the scene of the fable 
to the vicinity of Naples, and out of Homer's lv 
^ApiKoig, forms Inarima, a name which was after- 
wards affixed to the little island, before called 
Pithecusa. That Homer was acquainted with the 
Euxine, is evident from his description of the 
Hippomolgians, and other nations in its neighbour- 
hood. There is no trace of the Adriatic in either 
of his poems, and though in the Batrachomyoma- 
chia the Eridanus is mentioned, it was another 
river, as the Padus had not acquired its Greek 
name so early. Phceacia or Corfu seems to have 
been the remotest land Homer knew towards the 
west, as he calls it, icr^arai. Even Herodotus seems 
unacquainted with the Adriatic. 



Military Art. 

47. Personal prowess decided every thing. The 
night attack and the ambuscade, though much 
esteemed, were never on a large scale. Ihe chiefs 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 91 

fight in advance, and enact almost as much as true 
knights of romance. There was no ditch or other 
work round the town, and the wall was accessible 
without a ladder ; it was probably a vast mound 
of earth with a declivity outwards. Patroclus 
thrice mounts it in armour. The Trojans are in 
no respect blockaded, and receive assistance from 
their allies to the very end. The Homeric sword 
had an edge only, and no point; the okojv, or 
javelin, was a missile ; the $opv or spear was hurled, 
or used as a pike, according to circumstances ; the 
shield was not borne on the left arm, but hung 
like a breastplate close to the body. The Oarians 
introduced the modern practice of bearing the 
shield separately. There was no cavalry, though 
horsemanship was not unknown. The chariot was 
like a truck, open behind, and so light that it 
might be carried on a man's back ; thus Diomede* 
thinks of carrying off the chariot of Rhesus. No 
standards are mentioned, nor are trumpets used in 
the Homeric action itself, though the trumpet is 
introduced for the purpose of illustration, as em- 
ployed in war, II. xviii. 219, and xxi. 388 ; hence 
arose the value of a loud voice in a commander, 
and fioijv ayaObg, was neither an inexpressive, nor 
a trivial title of a superior chieftain. The only 
machine mentioned is the wooden horse. Homer 
is silent as to the use of watchwords, and from 
the night adventure of Diomede, Ulysses, and 
Dolon, it seems clear that the Trojans had no 
sentinels. In the use of these, and in the silence 
and order with which the Greeks advance to action, 
the only superiority of the military discipline of 
the Greeks consist. Vico concludes from a passage 
in the Odyssey, i. 260, that poisoned arrows were 

* Diomede, and on this occasion, is the only person men- 
tioned in Homer as riding on horseback. 



92 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

employed in war ; the passage affords no proof as 
to common practice, and there is no allusion to 
that barbarous practice in the Iliad. 

48. In surgery, agriculture, architecture, fortifi- 
cation, smith's and carpenter's work, the attain- 
ments of the age are accurately displayed, and yet 
with an ease and simplicity which indicate complete 
knowledge and long use. In that early age the 
poet must have possessed all the knowledge of men 
and things then attainable, for his character was 
pre-eminently that of a teacher, and no ignorance 
would have been excusable in one of his preten- 
sions ; he could not derive his information second- 
hand from books, there being none, and it was this 
necessity of learning every thing practically, by 
seeing and hearing, that induced the clearness and 
force of description so peculiar to Homer. 



49. It is an error of the ancient grammarians 
to suppose the Homeric language consisted of a 
diversity of dialects ; such a position is absurd if 
the Iliad be the work of a single author, and 
groundless even on the hypothesis of Heyne. The 
Iliad was written before the distinction of dialects 
existed. From the amalgamation of the Pelasgie 
and Hellenic, two shoots of the great Japetic or 
western form of speech, resulted a common lan- 
guage which, whether it be called Achaean, Danaic, 
or Doric, must be considered as the immediate 
basis of Homeric Greek. It is not probable that 
any very definite sub-division existed in the mother 
tongue previously to the colonization of the coasts 
of Asia Minor, first by emigrants from the Pelo- 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 93 

ponessus, who were called ^Eolians, and subse- 
quently by emigrants from Attica, who were called 
Ionians ; and it may be presumed, that the dis- 
tinctions of Doric, iEolic, and Ionic, denoted, 
previously to the emigrations to Asia, nothing 
more than the different settlements of the same 
family or tribe of Hellen. Hellen, (son of Deu- 
calion,) from whom the Greeks received their 
name, had three sons, iEolus, Dorus, and Xuthus; 
iEolus and Dorus having fixed on settlements 
apart, and intermarrying with different houses, 
formed distinct tribes or clans ; Xuthus passed 
into Attica, and married a daughter of Erectheus, 
by whom he had two sons, Achseus and Ion; 
Achseus retired into Laconia, and gave his name 
to that country, whilst the Athenians adopted that 
of Ion, and from him were called, in Homer's time, 
'Iaovfc? II. xiii. 685, and their language Ionian. 
Neleus, son of Oodrus, led a colony of these Ionians 
into Asia Minor, who carried their language with 
them. These having been only Attics by resi- 
dence and Ionians by blood, were thenceforth 
styled Ionians, whilst those who remained at 
Attica assumed the name of Attics or Athenians. 
Before this migration, the Hellenes being, on the 
return of the Heraclidse, expelled from their set- 
tlements, fled to Achsea, and forced its inhabitants 
into Attica, these were afterwards called Attic- 
Ionians, to distinguish them from those who re- 
mained in the Peloponessus, called iEgialean Ionians. 
{Thus a double alliance took place between the 
ancient Ionic and iEolic, one antecedent, the 
other subsequent to the Asiatic migration. The 
Ionians were the first who refined their native 
tongue, in consequence of their commerce with, 
and proximity to, civilized Asia, and the richness 
of their soil ; the iEolians also improved theirs, 
but retained many usages omitted by the Ionians. 



94 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

The birth and growth of the Attic were later, and 
founded on a much more general adoption of the 
idioms of foreign nations; the Doric of Laconia- 
and Messenia may be considered as remaining the 
spring of the whole, much refined in course of 
time, but still preeminently the mother tongue of 
Greece. A colony of iEolians also settled in 
Sicily, and another being driven from Arcadia by 
the Hellenes, emigrated to Latium, where they 
introduced the original Pelasgic language and cha- 
racters ; hence the similarity of the Latin and 
iEolic dialects. The Jliad is written in the softest 
and most improved Greek of the time, sciz. the 
Ionian. Those words which have been called 
instances of other dialects, are really legitimate 
parts of the ancient common speech, and only 
became peculiar when dialects subsequently arose, 
retaining idioms which, though rejected by others, 
were equally the genuine offspring of the old and 
fundamental language. If the Heraclidse returned 
to the Peloponnese, B.C. 1044, and were finally 
settled there 984 B.C. and if the Ionic migration 
took place sixty years afterwards, B.C. 924, and 
if Homer lived 907 B.C. according to the Arundelian 
Marbles, or 884, according to Herodotus, he must 
have lived shortly after the Ionic migration. 
Knight supposes he was one of the original set- 
tlers. He greatly improved the language. Greek is 
said to have sprang completely formed from his 
mouth, as Minerva from Jupiter's head ; certainly, as 
in the cases of Dante and Chaucer, a very remark- 
able refinement is to be dated from the composition 
of the Iliad. Bentley gives the Homeric language 
the title of iEolico-Ionic. The Greek of the Iliad, 
though not equal to express metaphysic abstrac- 
tions, is to express strong and distinct feeling, 
and is much more precise than that of Nonnus, 
Quintus, and other imitators in the decline of 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 95 

Greek literature, who almost entirely omit the 
numerous particles which so finely articulate the 
.pulses of emotion in the Iliad. The strict rules of 
grammatical concord and analogy are not more 
frequently violated in Homer than in Thucydides ; 
these seeming violations being perhaps owing to our 
ignorance of the genius and full powers of the 
language. The Ionic was particularly adapted to 
the hexameter, which was carried to its highest 
perfection by the poets of Ionia. The Attic was 
essentially contracted Ionic. The Ionics availed 
themselves of an artifice ealle<J fiErawXa^fjibg fcA/atwc, 
or transposition of the declension, which consisted 
in the assumption of a different nominative from 
that in ordinary use as the basis of inflection. 
Thus, qAki, An-/, as from a\g. Ate, instead of aAfc^.J 
Am), &c. The augment seems to have been un- 
known to, or found place but very seldom in, the 
primitive language. The Ionic fluctuated in its 
use ; from certain compounds it constantly excludes 
it, in others it invariably retains it, in others it 
was used or dispensed with according to the exi- 
gencies of the rhythm. It is not found in the 
tenses of wtfjifiaivio and 7reptf5a\\w, it is always 
in those of ajU(f>iKa\virTtt) and afx^nrivofxai. The 
Attic writers invariably made use of the augment 
in prose, but allowed themselves some latitude in 
verse, which approached more nearly to the stan- 
dard of the ancient language ; the Attic tragic 
authors, however, invariably used^ the augment. 
Homer wrote in old Ionic, Herodotus in new — the 
principal points of difference are the following 
five — 1. The Ionic of Herodotus presents far 
more numerous instances of the use of the aug- 
ment than that of Homer; a proof of the extreme 
rareness of its use in the primitive dialect. 2. 
The later Ionic omitted the ephelcustic v, even in 
cases where the following word began with a vowel 



96 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

or diphthong, an hiatus inadmissible in Homer. 
3. The change of the soft into aspirate mutes 
before aspirated vowels, which regularly takes 
place in Homer, occurs not in Herodotus. 4. The 
dative singular of the third declension is expressed 
in Homer with the diaeresis, in Herodotus never, 
he uses 7roAt, ^vva/j.^ &c. 5. In the particles ttw, 
7ra>e, uttwq, &c. the later Ionics changed ir into k. 
The writers in the old Attic are Thucydides and 
the tragic poets — in the middle, Aristophanes, 
Lysias, Plato — in the new, iEschines, Demosthenes, 
Isocrates, Menanderj^Kenophon. In the old Doric, 
Epicharmus, Sophron, and the writers of the origi- 
nal songs to Bacchus, which were succeeded by the 
chorusses in tragedy. In new Doric, Bion, Cal- 
limachus, Moschus, Pindar, Theocritus. In Ionic, 
Anacreon, Arrian, Herodotus, Hippocrates, Py- 
thagoras. In iEolic, Alcaeus, Sappho. The lan- 
guage of Troy was that of Greece, particularly of 
Thrace, and the earliest Greek poets were from 
the neighbourhood of the Troade ; thus Orpheus, 
Musseus, Eumolpus, Thamyris, were of Thrace. 
The rival patronage of so many separate and 
independent states contributed greatly to the im- 
provement of the Greek language. 



Digamma. 

• 

50. The old dialects of Greece admitted few or 
no aspirates. The digamma was calculated to 
prevent the hiatus, which the concurrence of vowels 
would produce ; this letter or mark was common 
to the Ionians, iEolians, Dorians, Laconians, and 
Boeotians. Aspirates were afterwards introduced 
into all the dialects except the iEolic, which ad- 



TREATISE ON HOSIER. 97 

tiered longer than the others to the digamma, 
hence it has preserved the name of the iEolic 
iigamma. The form of this character was at first 
% gamma reversed, then a gamma, then a double 
»amma F, whence it derives its name ; hence it 
has sometimes been written TajSiot for Faj3*o«. 
The Emperor Claudian ordered that it should be 
WTitten ^ or F reversed, but probably that form 
ended with the inscription on his tomb. The cha- 
racter itself is not found in anv manuscripts of 
ancient poets, but it is distinctly written on the 
Delian marble discovered by Montfaucon in 1 708 ; 
on some coins of the Greek town of Velia, in Italy; 
and on the inscription discovered by Gell, in 1813, 
near Olympia, in Elis, which is in the IEolic dialect, 
and is supposed to be dated about 615 B.C. This 
is the most ancient prose extant, and yet is more 
modern than Homer's language, particularly in 
the application of the article to proper names, the 
general omission of which is a strong proof of the 
antiquity of the Iliad and Odyssey. It cannot be 
ascertained what was the pronunciation of the 
digamma. In its origin it was a soft, guttural 
sound, like gh in cough ; from a guttural, the tran- 
sition was natural to the sound of our W. In this 
-state it passed into Italy, under the form of V, 
the sound of which it had in the iEolic dialect 
and in Latin. The Lacedaemonian dialect, a branch 
of the iEolic, pronounced and wrote it like B, a 
letter which, in modern Greece, has the sound of 
V. That the same similarity existed in Latin ap- 
pears by the deduction of ferbui from ferveo, &c. 
[(Thus the Latin V. was frequently expressed in 
Greek byB, as Bappwv from Varro, and the Greek 
]B was changed in Latin into V, as j3aSo>, vado.) 
IDionysius of Halicarnassus compares its sound with 
(that of the diphthong ov in OviXta, Velia. So Vir- 
jgilius was written by the Greek writers in the 



r 



98 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

reign of the Caesars OvtpyiXiog. This opinion 
Dunbar adopts. It is possible that the digamma 
final, or before a consonant, was pronounced like 
our F, and before a vowel like our V. (The Ionic 
"Vav or Bav seems to have been the same as theiEolic 
digamma.) Thus olvog vinum, olkoq vicus, rip, ver. 
Ig. vis. oig. ovis. alwv sevum, v\ri, sylva. From the 
last instance it appears that the aspirate breathing • 
in our language is often represented by S in ano- \ 
iher. So £'£ sex. virlp super, vg, sus. It would ap- ( . 
pear that the digamma was at first a rough breath- [ 
ing, that several wojds were aspirated in the early C 
ages, which were pronounced with the soft breathing j 
after the Persian wars ; and that the ancient Greek j 
aspiration was much rougher than that preserved 
by the literary part of the nation afterwards, for , 
■we find the aspirate is strong enough in Homer to j 
prevent the collision of concurring vowels, which; 
it is unable to do in the Tragedians — so in English, 
a hero, a hand, the hill, &c The use of the di- 
gamma having been insensibly abolished by the 
introduction of aspirates, the transcribers of Homer, 
neglected to mark it, and at length the vestiges of 
its existence were confined to a few ancient in- 
scriptions. To remove the hiatus, his commentators 
interposed v, or the particles y\ £', r ; (but these; 
could not suit every passage,) or doubled consonants^ 
&c. Bentley was the great restorer of the di< 
gamma. He supposed the character as well asj 
the power to have existed in Homer's time, and 
proposed an edition of the Iliad with the digamma 
prefixed — since executed by Knight. Dawes sup- 
posed the power to have existed in Homer's time., 
the character to be of subsequent creation. Ii 
there were any charaters in Homer's time, pro-j 
bably the digamma existed, but was omitted or 
the revival of the poems under Pisistratus, it»_| 
power having then become obsolete. The difficult) 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 99 

in the application of the digamma is that there is 
not one digammated word in Homer, with regard 
to which the use of the digamma is constant ; 
aXig. ei'Sw. oltcog. olvog. are the most frequently 
digammated. Yet to them there are exceptions. 
To solve this difficulty it is supposed that the 
Homeric poems were composed at a period when 
the use of it was still general, but yet beginning to 
be laid aside, and that the application or non- 
application of it had become the subject of poetical 
license, in some words its use, in others its omis- 
sion, being the more common. Augments often 
retain the digamma of the verb, as £oX7ra from. 
I'Xttw. Many words take a double digamma ; one 
before the augment, the other before the verb, as 
vvktI FeFoiKbjg. In many compounded words the 
digamma is placed in the middle, as 7rpoFddu). It 
is inserted in several simple words, as oFtc, vXF?j. 
; i and v were substituted for the digamma. Hence 
j, to 'AtjoIfc^c succeeded 'ArpEtSrjc- The Latin dialect 
' naturally adopted the iEolic digamma, which is 
I generally expressed by V, as karia Vesta, &c. — 
j (V^ide Valpy's grammar). Sometimes by B, as 
I Svo>, dubium, /Liopog, morbus, by 0, as crepci, cetera, 
F, as o/iiXog, famulus, R, as ( i\aog, hilaris. In Eng- 
lish the digamma has become W, viog, new, vermis,, 
wornl, fistula, whistle. The digamma was a prin- 
cipal agent in the formation of tenses in Latin ; 
thus from amo, amai, was formed amavi, deleo, 
delei, delevi. 

The Attics endeavoured to avoid the hiatus more 
than the other Greeks, and amongst the Attics the 
j poets more than the prose writers. They employed 
(three modes to avoid it. The v tytXicvoTiKov? 
j apostrophe, and contraction The Ionians used 
these means very seldom (not being offended at 
| the concourse of vowels), and only in poetry. The 
hiatus is frequent in Herodotus. The digamma is 

f 2 



100 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

supposed to have occupied the sixth place in the 
original Pelasgic alphabet of ancient Greece. The 
principles on which Bentley proceeded, in his dis- 
covery of the digamma, rested on the observation 
that there were certain words in Homer beginning 
with a vowel, which were never preceded by a 
consonant, and others of which the two first syl- 
lables were short, which were never preceded by a 
double consonant, except in cases of clear corrup- 
tion and easy correction, (Dawes found this the 
case in all the places in the Iliad where ava% and 
£7roe occur) ; hence he concluded that the digamma I 
aiust have formed a constituent part of these and/' 
similar words, to prevent the metre being violated; ; 
there are, however, places where its use is irrecon- 
cileable. Matthise disputes, sec. 41, its existence, L 
and Dunbar thinks it necessary only in olvog and 
USh). Dawes differs from Bentley in two points :: 
1st — he calls it the Ionic bau, and gives it the' 
power of W. Knight supports Dawes ; Bishop! 
Marsh opposes him, and gives it the power of F. 
2d — Bentley thought both character and power 
were known to Homer ; Dawes only the character. 
It would seem to be known to Homer from its being; 
found on monuments ; but was omitted from hie! 
poems by the grammarians under Pisistratusr 
Heyne has followed up Dawes 1 principles. There 
are several words digammated by the ancient 
grammarians which do not admit the digamma in 1 
Homer. For list of digammated words, vide 
Trollope, Coleridge, and Thiersch. Thiersch prove*] 
the existence of the digamma in Homer — 1st, b)\ 
words which still retain it in the text, as ylvvoi 
for f'Aow, yivro for '£\zto — 2d, by its necessity to 1 ] 
account for the metre, hiatus, &c. &c, befon- 
words from which it has disappeared in the text 
No word had it so frequently as the pronoun of th< 
third person, a>, £9zv, oT, L That it existed in thi 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 101 

and other words is thus manifested. When short 
vowels suffer no elision before them, as II. a. 4, "7, 
when in composition neither elision nor crasis 
takes place, as airosnre, atpyog, when verbs, 
which should take the temporal augment take the 
syllabic, £a£e, or have the digamma converted into 
v still remaining, as evaStv. Thiersch accounts for 
the inconsistent use of the digamma in Homer, 
partly from the ignorance of grammarians and 
transcribers — partly from the fact or general rule, 
that after apostrophe the digamma is thrown away, 
as II. y. 103 — ?. 474 — and partly as is the case 
with other consonants, from the necessities of the 
versification. Thus yaia, cua. II. B. 95, and T. 243, 

blWKb), \d)Kl] KIWV, ld)V Aaj3w, u(3d) GVQ, VQ, &C. 

&c. Since these words, according to the exigencies 
of the metre, retain or reject the consonant, digam- 
mated words on the same principle, sometimes 
throw away the digamma ; and this supposition is 
confirmed by the mutability of the letter, its sup- 
pression after apostrophe, and its entire extinction 
in later times. 

Apostrophe injures the forms of words, by mak- 
ing them similar to one another, and thus undis- 
tinguishable ; placed after consonants, however, it 
allows the syllables to be discriminated through the 
pronunciation ; on the other hand, it is impossible 
to make elision sensibly heard between vowels, as 
Kv\pei 6 yipiov. Here apostrophe is merely a mark 
for the eye. Since, therefore, the Homeric poems 
were immediately intended for the ear, it is proper, 
according to Herman, to remove apostrophe, even 
after consonants, where this can be effected by the 
insertion of other forms, as in the above example, 
by Kvipai 6 yiputv. 



102 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 



Versification. 



51. The metre of the Iliad is the best, and its 
rhythm the least, understood of any in use 
amongst the ancients. The trimeter Iambic was 
written with almost equal success by number- 
less Greek poets, because the technical rules of 
the Senarius would, if closely followed, in all com- 
petent hands, produce nearly the same effect — 
whereas no one ever maintained for twenty lines 
together the Homeric modulation of the hexameter, 
on account of the endless variety of its rhythm, 
The specific excellence of the Homeric rhythm, is 
its endless variety. Quintus Sniyrnseus is the best 
imitator of the manner of the Iliad. The last line 
of the Iliad is admired by Cowper for its beauty 
and simplicity — (the conclusion of the Paradise 
Lost is not unlike) — but if the twenty-fourth book 
of the Iliad be not Homer's, Cowper's admiration 
must be groundless. 

There is nothing in Homer more deserving of [ 
admiration than the expressive simplicity, and the 
harmonious cadence, of his versification. Tha 
majestic force of compound epithets ; the harmo-J 
nious pauses ; the easy flow of the numbers ; and * 
the unvaried adaptation of the sound to the sense, 
are appreciated by every reader. 

52. In the Homeric hexameter the principal 
caesura is the penthemimeral, or the division of the f 
verse at the end of a word, in the middle of the 
third foot, where the voice naturally pauses in 
reading it. Of this there are two species, the- 
syllabic, as in the first line, and the trochaic, as in ; 
the second ; they occur nearly equally, though in ' 
the first book there are 315 lines having the,- 
trochaic, and only 290 lines having the syllabic — ; 
there being only six lines having no caBSura, viz.— 
145, 218, 307, 400, 466, 584. Of these verses " 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 103 

the greater proportion divide themselves into three 
distinct syzygies, or pairs of feet, many of them 
consisting entirely of proper names. A division of 
the verse also frequently occurs in the middle of 
the fourth foot, which is called the hephthemimeral 
caesura. There are very few verses, however, con- 
taining this, in which the other is not also found. 
The following are nearly all the examples in the 
Iliad of the hephthemimeral caesura only : I\ 71 ; 
A. 124, 329, 451; 9.346; I. 186; K. 502; A.494; 
N. 715 ; O. 368 ; S. 567 ; T. 38 ; O. 292 ; X. 258 ; 
¥. 362. 

53. It is a well-known property of the 
caesura, that if the vowel on which it falls be the 
last of a word, and short, such vowel is con- 
sequently lengthened; in addition to this, however, 
there are continual instances in Homer of the 
lengthening of short syllables, both at the heginning 
and end of words, provided that such syllables be 
the first of the foot. The principle on which thisi 
proceeds is similar to that of the caesura, and 
arises from the swell of the voice on the first 
syllable of every foot, which was considered neces- 
sary to the proper reading of the verse. The in- 
crease of time, which this rising inflection of the 
voice, called the arsis, required, to elevate it above 
the ordinary tone, was considered a sufficient cause 
for lengthening the syllable on which it fell. For 
example, see Iliad A. 36 ; A. 135 ; I. 313 ; T. 5 43, 
367, 390, 400. In order to lengthen a syllable in 
the middle of a word, it was usual to double the 
succeeding consonant, or to substitute, instead of 
the vowel, the corresponding diphthong — as,£§§£((rE, 
tsXeUto. Dunbar, however, accounts for the pro- 
duction of the syllable on the same principle as in 
other cases, and employs only the single consonant 
or vowel. In A. 342 ; X. 5 ; the adjective oXobg 
sj seeming to be an exception, as it occurs with the 



104? TREATISE ON HOMER. 

penultima long, the only apparent reason for 
which is derived from the arsis — the readings 
cXwiJGi and 6XwiJ, oAotytn, and 6\oiy having no 
authority. In the compounds a7roa7ra>v T.j 35, 
cnrcipay, $.283, and the like, the verb and the 
preposition must be considered as distinct. 

There are some instances also of the lengthening 
of short syllables at the end of a foot, (i. e. in the 
thesis, or fall of the voice,) before a liquid ; hence 
these letters are supposed to have possessed a cer- 
tain property of doubling themselves in the pro- 
nunciation, by which means the preceding vowel 
becomes long — thus, E. 358. This vis cKrarcici}, as 
It is called, unquestionable belonged to the initial 
p. The case is different in A. 193 — aoc 6 ravO' — I 
here the pronoun is emphatic, and the stress of the 
voice, which in consequence rested on it, had the 
effect of lengthening the syllable. Compare K. 507; 
O. 539 ; P. 106 ; 2. 15 ; $. 602 ; in all these cases 
Bentley proposes to read tug oys. 



Of the shortening of long vowels or diphthongs, 

54. It may be observed as a general rule, that a 
long vowel or diphthong at the end of a word, be- 
fore another vowel or diphthong, is always made 
short, except in the arsis ; but in the beginning or 
middle of a word it generally remains long, under 
the same circumstances. The only exception to 
the former part of the rule is B. 144, where Dunbar, 
to whom the canon is due, would read ttovtov t 
^lKCLpioio, observing, that ttovtoq is usually applied 
to this sea by Homer, and OaXaaaa to the JEgean ; 
so that two seas are intended, and not one only, 
by means of apposition. With regard to long 
vowels or diphthongs remaining so in the beginning 
or middle of words, exceptions are chiefly confined 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 105 

to the word Ittutj, as in A. 169 and elsewhere; 
which Thiersch explains, by supposing that £77-6117 
was originally read tVc! rj. In B. 415, and other 
passages, when the word Sriiog occurs with the first 
syllable short, the t may be subscribed ; and in A 
380, the true reading is probably fiefiXzai, the 2d 
sing. pres. pass, of fitfiXrifii. With respect to the 
Correptiones Atticse, as they are called, (i. e. the 
shortening of vowels before words beginning with 
a double consonant, or a mute and a liquid,) it is 
a peculiarity of Homer that he seldom adopts 
j them, unless in those words, chiefly proper names, 
I which could not otherwise have place in a hex- 
j ameter. Thus the words fipaxiwv, Sjoa/cw v, KjoaSai va>, 
I and the genitive plural of fiporbg, must have been 
■ entirely excluded from the Iliad, without a partial 
admission of this license. Compare M. 389 ; B. 
308; N. 504; H. 446. The same observation 
applies to the words 2icajuavfy>oe, B. 465; ZaicvvOov, 
B. 634 ; ZeXuav, B. 824, &c. In r, 414, the word 
ax^rXit] occurs with the first syllable short, which, 
unless it be corrupt, cannot be excused on the plea 
of necessity ; neither can the shortening of Se 
before Spayfiara, in A. 69, and before xp^ i0V -> m ^ 
186. Such instances, however, are very rare — if 
frequent, they would injure the melody. 



Of Elision or Apostrophe, and Crasis 

55. All the short and doubtful vowels are elided 
(by Homer (except Y), together with the diphthong 
[At, and sometimes, though rarely, Ot. The latter 
usage has indeed been doubted altogether; but 
Ithere are some unquestionable examples in the 
(Iliad — as N. 481. Compare Iliad Z. 165 ; I. 673 ; 
IK. 544 ; II. 207. This elision, however, seems to 

f 3 



106 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

be confined to jxoi and tol ; of the elision of ai 
before a short vowel, the instances are numerous. 
With respect to vowels, the only observation of 
importance relates to the final i of the dative 
singular, of which the elision is extremely rare. 
In E. 5, we have aarip oirtopivio. Compare II. 385 ; 
A. 259 ; A. 588 ; M. 88 ; N. 289 ; 12. 26. The most 
usual erases in Homer are those of r\ with the 
diphthong ov — as in E. 349, tJ oi>x «^c 5 an( i with 
£t — as in E. 466, r) ugoke. The particle drj also, 
sometimes forms a crasis with the initial vowel of 
the following word — as in T. 220, og drj acpvEiorarog. 
A crasis of a somewhat remarkable nature is con- 
structed between the diphthongs u and ov in N. 777. 
Compare Odyssey A. 352 ; A. 1. 



Of Synizesis. 



56. This figure is nearly allied to crasis, and 
consists in the extrusion of a short vowel before a 
long one or a diphthong, by which means two 
syllables coalesce into one. This is particularly the 
case with the vowels ew — as in A. I, II TjXrjmSetD ; 
and ea — as in the accusative singular of nouns in 
evg. The two last syllables, however, do not 
necessarily coalesce in these accusatives, as some 
suppose — since the final a, though generally long, 
is not necessarily so — and the few deviations from 
the rule which are to be found in Attic poets, have 
most probably arisen out of the sanction which the 
Ionic dialect affords. 

57. The Greek language was probably a good 
deal cultivated before Homer's time ; for though it - 
may be doubted that Olen, Orpheus, Musseus, 
and Eumolpus preceded him, there can be no 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 107 

doubt about Thamyris, whom he represents in 
B. 595, as having contended with the muses. No 
art was cultivated so early as poetry. The praises 
of the gods and heroes were celebrated in verse ; 
the laws, maxims of morality, and the history of 
events were recorded in poetry. Great facility 
also was afforded for this cultivation by the nature 
of the Greek language ; its expressive sounds, its 
varieties of flexion, its wonderful aptness for com- 
bination, and singular felicity for characterising 
every object of nature rendered it peculiarly sus- 
ceptible of improvement. Consequently Homer 
found the poetical style in a high state of improve- 
ment, retaining, however, in a few instances, 
vestiges from the rude state from which it had 
sprung, such as the terminations tyi, 6a, 6e, Qev and 
Se. The Ionic dialect, which he chiefly used, had 
been refined as much as possible by the elision of 
consonants, and the bringing together as many 
vowels as were consistent with the structure of the 
component parts of words and the harmony of 
sound. 

58. Three things must be proved before it is 
admitted that Homer used the JEolic digamma — < 
1st, that he chiefly used the iEolic dialect — 2dly, 
that the digamma was not a vowel sound, but al- 
ways possessed the power of a consonant — 3dly, 
that it is essentially necessary for his versification. 

(1.) Homer wrote in the Ionic, not in the 
JEolic, dialect ; for though some peculiarities of 
the iEolic dialect are found in Homer, the same 
may be said of the Attic and others, and yet he 
did not write in those dialects. (2.) Though it 
may be said that the Ionians use the Ionic vau, 
with the power of a consonant instead of the di- 
gamma, yet Dunbar thinks that both were merely 
rough breathings, which at first were wholly gut- 
tural, but afterwards softened to the breathing of 



108 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

the letter H, and lastly to the spiritus asper. (in 
the Sigsean inscription, and others, H is used as 
an aspirate) ; the H was abbreviated into the 
form of F (the digamma) for the sake of despatch; 
It afterwards assumed a crescent shape € , and 
lastly that of the spiritus asper. '. Even though 
the digamma or Ionic vau had been used by the 
early Greeks as a consonant it must have disap- 
peared before Homer's time, for his language has 
every mark of high cultivation and of a systematic 
endeavour to exclude a multiplicity of consonants. 
Then to introduce the digamma as a consonant, 
with the power of F. or V, would be to rebarbarize 
the language. The supporters of the digamma 
should shew what was its particular character 
among the iEolians; but in this they are not 
agreed, some giving it the sound of ou, others of 
f or v, and unless it can be shewn that Homer 
used the iEolic dialect alone, it may be asserted 
with equal confidence that he used JB, which was 
employed by the Lacedaemonians instead of the 
digamma, or - and (p, which were used by others. 
Knight makes the digamma a simple aspirate 
rather than an aspirated consonant, differing from 
the common note of aspiration in the impulse being 
given from the throat rather than from the tongue 
and palate. Dr. Burgess makes the digamma long 
v or double v ; that thus it was opposed to upsilon, 
as omicron to omega. He considered it a vowel, 
and that though it resembles a double gamma it 
was in fact a double vau, and that it was called 
vau (from the Hebrew) before it was called di-» 
gamma. V and v also in Latin were nearly con- 
vertible sounds, with this difference, that the v was 
always pronounced before a vowel, with the sound 
of the Greek ov or English oo, as in good, and with 
a slight aspiration ; the v always before a conso* 
nant without the least aspiration, and with a more 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 109 

open sound. The argument has little weight that 
rests on the Latin V being used for the digamma 
in several words derived from Greek, for there is 
no evidence that the iEolians ever sent colonies to 
Italy. These colonies rather seem to have been 
wandering tribes of the ancient Pelasgi, who car- 
ried with them their barbarous pronunciation, and 
retained it after the language of the mother coun- 
try was improved and refined, before and at 
Homer's time. If the digamma had ever been 
used as a consonant before particular words, it is 
fair to conclude that it would always have continued 
so, and not occasionally ; it would also have re- 
mained a fixed letter in the language, like any 
other consonant, neither of which has happened. 
Whereas, supposing it to have had the sound of 
a vowel, or a rough breathing, it might be con- 
sidered only as an organic peculiarity in pronunci- 
ation, and would be changed, like all other pecu- 
liarities of the same kind, when the language 
became more improved — nor, in the third place, is 
it necessary to sustain the metre, or prevent the 
hiatus of vowels ; it will be evident, from Dunbar's 
rules, that the metre does not require its interpo- 
sition, except in two words at most, oivog and aSw, 
which, however, either by a different collocation, 
or a partial change, may be rendered independent 
of it. To prevent the hiatus in several places the 
v is added*, as was done by later poets. Had the 
digamma been originally employed for this pur- 
pose it is not likely that so useful a letter would 
have entirely disappeared, as it did in the time of 
Herodotus, who quotes a line II. z. 289, in which 
the insertion of the digamma as a consonant would 
ruin the metre. Its supporters always prefix it to 

Probably by Homer; more probably by the Alexandrian 
grammarians, from the practice of the Attic poets. 



110 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

og his. ; but In S. 5 the digamma as a consonant 
would ruin the metre. Had the digamma been 
used as it is asserted, it would have been preserved 
with as much care as those remains of the ancient 
language, 0a, Oev, &, <j>i, &c. Hermann thinks that 
an hiatus takes place in hexameters only when the 
last syllable of the word ending in the vowel, be- 
fore the word beginning with a vowel, is not in the 
arsis. Heyne thinks that the hiatus takes place 
when a vowel at the end of a word goes before a 
word beginning with a vowel, and is not elided, 
Dunbar does not approve of either. On the latter 
hypothesis the hiatus would take place in many 
instances, where no digamma was ever thought of, 
as A. 333, B. 87, E 568, K. 93 ; it is therefore fair 
to conclude that the digamma was not judged 
necessary to prevent the hiatus of vowels, since if 
it was not employed universally for that purpose, 
we can have no evidence that it was^used partially. 
In many instances the digamma, if inserted with 
those words which have a claim to it, would injure 
the metre, Z. 886 ; A. 437 ; P. 260 ; S. 5, 274, &c. 
The digamma also would introduce two aspirates 
in two successive syllables, which the Attics always 
avoided, as in Ody. 1, 279, A. 296. 

The following are the laws, on which, from a 
most copious induction of particulars, Dunbar con- 
ceives the structure of Homer's verse to be chiefly 
founded — 

1. A long vowel or diphthong at the end of a 
word, before another vowel or dipthong, is always 
short, except in csesural syllables, which must be 
uniformly long. 

2. Along vowel or diphthong, in the beginning or 
middle of a word, before another vowel or diph- 
thong, is always long. 

3. A long vowel or diphthong, preceding a short 
vowel in the end of a word, elided in consequence 



TREATISE ON HOMER. Ill 

of the next word beginning with a vowel, remains 
long before that vowel. 

4. A vowel naturally short frequently forms the 
first syllable of a foot, whether at the beginning of 
a verse or in the middle of a word, in consequence* 
of the ictus metricus, or lengthened tone of the 
voice upon that syllable. 

5. A syllable, naturally short, when it happens 
to be the caesura, is for the same reason made 
long. 

6. The conjunction kol ought never to be the 
first syllable of a foot, before a word beginning 
either with a vowel or a diphthong. 

60. These rules do away with the necessity of 
doubling consonants, or introducing a new one, as 
the digamma. He was led to make these deduc- 
tions in consequence of some ingenious critics hav- 
ing imagined that the long vowels, being composed 
of double letters, were divided in pronunciation, in 
those cases in which the metre requires them to 
be short, and that the former retained the vowel 
sound, with its original time, while the latter was 
made to coalesce with the succeeding vowel. — 
Whether this ever took place with the long vowels 
may be considered doubtful. It is more probable 
that the diphthongs, which are also compounds, 
were pronounced in some such way, the preposi- 
tive vowel being sounded by itself, with its usual 
quantity, except when it formed the csesural syl- 
lable, and the subjunctive being transferred, as a 
consonant, to the succeeding vowel. In Iambic, 
and sometimes in Trochaic and Anapaestic verse 
this takes place in the middle of a word, but never 
in Hexameter, except at the end. Thus in Oedip. 
Ty. 140, **f* fkjfOMrfrii x s, p} I'/AupMi <J6\o'. In the II. i. 
S3, ought probably to be read in this manner — « 
AlSug\6ai (F h\pr\a> Ka\y ay\aa\^()(da y a\iTOLva, 

61. The first rule holds no less than 210 times 



112 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

in the 1st bk., with only five or six exceptions, 
•which may be considered as errors capable of 
emendation. The csesural syllables of long vowels 
and diphthongs occur in the same bk. upwards of 60 
times ; the following are examples — A 30, 98, 119, 
132, 321 ; the correction of 145 was given before. 
The genitive Uav9ov 17, 9, and 23, 40, and 3, 146, 
which violates this rule, should be read YlavOoov, 
for the patronymic is Uavdo'ldrig, which could not 
have been formed homUavOog. Patronymics formed 
from proper names in og have idrig if the preceding 
syllable is short,as AiaictSqc from Aia/coc, tadrjg or 
clSijc, if it is long, as IIiiAijta&jc or n.r]\eidr,g; be- 
sides, the derivation is7rai; and Oobg, celer. 

62. The deviations from the 2d rule in the 1st 
book are only two or three (156 and 169), chiefly 
in the word Itte^, in which u is made short before 
r\. Dunbar thinks the word lirur\ a creation of 
some ignorant critic, and that Homer wrote liru. 
He corrects both the lines by restoring the elided 
vowel ; Sijiog also offends against this rule, but it 
may be amended by subscribing the iota, or making 
it, with rj, an improper diphthong, or perhaps the 
adjective should be Saiog, in which a is always 
short. j3£]3Xr]at never violates the rule, except in 
one place, A 380 ; but the true reading has been 
preserved in the Cod. Venet. fi£(5\eai. 2d sing. pres. 
pass, from fiifiXrjfii. To these may be added 
Aijtffri? I. 408 ; but the true reading, as in the Cod. 
Venet. is Aaorrrj, which also should be the reading in 
verse 406 ; also otoar N. 275, the reading should be 
vjg IcjtX for olog laai. 

63. There are a few deviations from the 3d rule, 
particularly when the conjunction rj occurs. Thus 
in A. 145, the rj before 'idofxevevg should be short. 
By first rule the rj should be read r}\ the £ being 
elided before the vowel. 

64. Fourth Rule. In the different feet used by 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 113 

the poets, there is always the ictus metricus, or 
stress of the voice, upon one particular syllable of 
each foot, according to the nature of the verse. 
This ictus has been called the arsis, or rising in- 
flection of the voice upon that syllable, while the 
other syllable or syllables have the thesis, or falling 
inflection. In Iambic verse the ictus or arsis is 
upon the second syllable of an Iambus, the second 
of a spondee, the last of an anapaest, and the first of a 
dactyl — in Trochaic verse, on the first of a trochee, 
spondee, and dactyl, and last of an anapaest — in 
Anapaestic verse, on the last of an anapaest, and on 
the first of a spondee and dactyl. The tribrach, 
consisting: of three short svllables, can have no ictus 

CD ti 

on any one of them, nor can a dactyl or anapaest 
have the ictus on any of their short syllables. In 
Hexameter verse the ictus is always on the first 
syllable of the foot. The use of the ictus is to pre- 
serve the harmonious rhythm of the verse. 

65. One of the causes assigned by Clarke for 
lengthening short caesural syllables is, the following 
word having the aspirate, which, he says, was often 
pronounced as a consonant, or as the digamma. 
Heyne echoes nearly the same sentiments. But if 
the aspirate had such a power, we might reasonably 
suppose that in those Latin words formed from the 
Greek, which substitute an h for the aspirate, that 
letter would have the power of a consonant in sup- 
porting short vowels. It is, however, merely a 
vowel-sound, and never sustains a vowel or short 
syllable. The true cause is, the ictus metricus, in 
consequence of which the first syllable of a foot, 
whether in the end, beginning, or middle of a word, 
must be pronounced equal in length to a syllable 
naturally long, to preserve the harmony of the 
verse. On this principle depends the lengthening of 
all caesural syllables, as well vowels and diphthongs 
as short syllables ; also the lengthening of many 



114 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

short syllables, both in the beginning and middle 
of words. 

66. The ancients, probably, in pronunciation 
ran the words more into each other than we are 
accustomed to do, and marked more correctly the 
different feet, and the length of each syllable in 
every foot. Former critics, to account for the 
lengthening of syllables naturally short, have either 
doubled the succeeding consonant, or transformed 
the vowel into its own diphthong ; and when these 
could not be done, the syllable was considered long 
by poetic license. But why would Homer double 
consonants at one time, and at another leave the 
vowels unsupported by any such props ? The true 
explanation is the Ictus — of this the following are 
examples : — Iliad, A. 14, 21 , 36, and 43, 64, 72, 
&c. : Iliad, E. 455 ; A. 388 (the consonant was 
supposed never to be doubled in a proper name) ; 
E. 61, the i in this verb, whether it be the imper- 
fect middle of <fti\rifii, or first aort. for tyiXrjtraroy 
is always short, except when it forms, as here, the 
first syllable of the foot. The i, of QiXoc, in Attic 
Greek is short, and is frequently lengthened in ( 
Homer by the ictus. a^varoe,aKajuar6e, airovhaQai, 
aTrodiwpai, IlpiajuiSrjc ; the first syllables in these 
words, naturally short, are lengthened by the ictus. 
The i in Sm for the same reason is lengthened — r. 
357 ; A. 135 ; the e in lireiSr) ; K . 379, and ¥. 2 ; 
the a in aopi ; A. 240 ; K. 484, avnp ; B. 1, 553, 
701, long; O. 487 ; A. 287, short ; B. 805 ; the v 
in v<$u)p, B. 755, long ; H. 425, short ; Ovyarrip, <I>. 
504, <I>. 85 ; the a in ad$u) is long in asidei StSawc, 
&c, Odyssey, P. 519 ; short in tov S* afiorov 
fie/iaaaiv Iikovzjazv, ottot atiSt] ; "A'iSog r. 322, 
long ; Odyssey, K. 502, short ; hpbg 0. 66, K. 56, 
fojutvB.440, j& 526—tLlj 1, 238, A. 257. Examples 
of syllables, naturally short, being lengthened by 
the ictus in the middle of words — kovit?, Iliad, B. 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 115 

150 ; E. 75— Zevyvfxsv, Iliad, 0. 120 ; II. 145 ; the 
i in i)'ia esca long, when first syllable of foot, short 
when second or third — Iliad, N. 103. Odyssey, A. 
363, Kpoviwv; A. 397 ; A. 249— /^juaore, N. 46; N. 
197, &c. ^ 

67. Being ignorant of this principle, critics and 
commentators have lengthened short syllables by 
doubling consonants, when the short vowel pre- 
ceded one, or by changing the vowel into its diph- 
thong, when it preceded a vowel. This is evident, 
inasmuch as the change is seldom or never made 
except in the first syllables of dactyls or spondees. 
Thus "OXvfxiroQ is made OvXy/unrog : A. 420, 425, 
(probably neither the long vowels nor diphthongs 
were in existence in Homer's time) ; so also 
7rov\v(3oTupr), vovgoq, ovkofjLtvr}v. The doubling 
of consonants chiefly took place in the dative plural 
of nouns and some tenses of verbs. Thus kvve(j<jiv 7 
A. 4; so A. 33, 42, 54, 70, 71, 83, 100,; B. 86, 
125 ; A. 142, &c. The a in inzcnv is most com- 
monly doubled ; but in A. 150 double g is inadmis- 
sible. So Ejusvai, II. 493 ; in the first syllable /m is 
always doubled, the v in avrjp might be doubled 
with as much propriety when av is the first syllable 
of the foot. 

68. It is very doubtful whether the short vowel 
was pronounced by itself with the time of a long 
vowel, or whether it was made to rest on the con- 
sonant. It is probable that the latter mode of 
pronunciation was common, when the vowel and 
consonant happened to come together in the same 
word — and hence the practice, when the true prin- 
ciple was lost, of doubling these consonants. 

69. The common form of the infinitive uvai, 
abbreviated from 'ifttvai, the original form, proves 
that only one p was used at first — thus t/uLtvai, by 
the elision of /x became zevai and then hvai. So 
also the mode of formation of futures shows that 



116 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

there could be no doubling of the o- in the future 
or aorist ; serw the future of tw, the Ionic form of 
dfii, was joined to certain words, such as <j>av, 
o-7rfjO, t£ju, and thus came the forms <pav-(<ju), ottejo- 
iato, t£ju-£<tw, abbreviated by Ionic writers into 
^>av-£w, <nr£p-£oj, and contracted by Attic writers 
into 0avw, otripw, &c. From these examples, and 
such verbs as form their futures in iato, as TsXiu)- 
Iffo), &c, it would appear also that pure verbs 
had originally the penult of the future short. 

It may be remarked that csesural syllables 
naturally short occur less frequently in Hesiod 
than in Homer. 

70. From the foregoing examples it appears 
that the principle of the ictus holds in the four 
following cases : — 

1st. In csesural syllables, ending with a long 
vowel or a diphthong, before another vowel or diph- 
thong, which in other cases is uniformly short.—* 
2. In ceesural syllables, naturally short, which are 
an consequence made long. — 3. In a short syllable 
at the beginning of a word, when it is also made 
the first of a foot. — 4. In a short syllable in the 
middle of a word, when it also is made the first of 
a foot. 

71. The same rule holds in Latin hexameter, 
where we find syllables naturally short, and unsup- 
ported by any consonants, made long by forming 
the first of a foot. That they do not occur so often 
in Latin as in Greek is owing to the greater num- 
ber of consonants in the former. Examples — 

Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori.— * 
Virg. Eel. 10, 69. 

Confisus periit, admirandisque lacertis. — Juvl. 

io, n. 

Alta tepefaciet permixta, flumina csede. — Catul. 
64. 

Omentum in flamma pingue liquefaciens. — CatuL 
361. 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 119 

72. It is scarcely necessary to produce examples 
in confirmation of the 5th rule, as they occur so 
frequently. E. 343 and Z. 76 are sufficient. The 
deviations from the 6th rule are so few that it is 
unnecessary to produce examples. 

73. Olen, the Lycian, is said to be the inventor 
of Grecian hexameter verse. 

74. Thiersch explains the principles of Homeric 
versification in the following manner : — 

(1.) The Homeric verse arises out of the follow- 
ing series or combination of syllables : — — ^ — 
or as in avrWtu), ^pfisiav. 

(2.) In the first place of these series, avr, r Epfi, 
the tone is raised ; hence here is the arsis, which 

may be marked by an oblique stroke, ouAo/zEvrjv, 

rjpwcov. 

(3.) After this rise the tone sinks again in the 
two short syllables, or the long one answering to 
them, and this part of the series is therefore called 
the thesis. 

(4.) In this thesis the tone fluctuates without 
finding a point of rest : 

ov\o/j.£... t rjpu)...in order to attain a point of rest it 
must light upon a second long syllable, by which 
the series of syllables may be closed, and made a 
whole, with beginning, middle, and end : ouXo/zevrji/ 

(____) ripwwv ( ) 

(5.) The conclusion may serve again as the arsis 

of a new series: _m_rr_ as 'aAA' f o /utv 

'A'i&lottciq, Tto-aau Aavaot, r or it terminates the 
series ; and then in order to moderate the vehe- 
ment flow of the syllables a single syllable may be 
placed after it, which may, therefore, be called the 

catalexis (the leaving off, KaraXriZiQ _ ^ w _ w or 
2 w w Z. — HsXToTo, wnfiara iraaxu. 



118 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

(6.) For the construction of the Homeric verse 
it is necessary — 

(A.) That the series _ ^ - 12i _, in which, by 
the renewed arsis, t measure and counter-measure 
are produced, be repeated : - ~ _ :rr _ | _ ^ _ 

(B.) That both these series, which, as two 
wholes, again appear as measure and counter- 
measure, have the catalexis : _^r_rr_:r:_:^: 

(C ) That both series, which thus stand without 
close coherence {aavvapTnroi) combine into a whole, 
which is effected by raising the catalexis in the 
middle ( - ) to a thesis ( m ), and thus the com- 
plete series attains the following form : __ ^1 J 



(7.) The measure of epic verse, constituted as 
above described, runs through six similar metres, 
which are made up of the words united into a 
verse. 

(8.) The conclusion of every word makes an in- 
cision (tojulti, caesura) in the verse ; that is to say, 
ihe series of metres is broken by the portion of 
time which intervenes between the pronunciation 
of two words, as II. a. 3, woWdg | S' Itydifiovcr \ 
*$?vxaa | "A'iSi \ wpo'iatpEv \ which verse, by the 
caesuras, is divided into the following five series: 



(9.) When the caesura falls upon the arsis it is 
called masculine, when after the first short of the 
metre ( _ w | . . . ) feminine or trochaic, after 
the second( _ ^ ^ | • . . ) dactylic, after the second 

long ( | . . . ) spondaic. So in the line above 

quoted, the second, third, and fourth caesuras are 
masculine ; the first is spondaic ; in verse 5, 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 119 

6l(t)voiai T6 | iraai \ Aiog \ & ZtzXeiIto | /3ouXt7. 
The second is feminine or trochaic, the fourth 
dactylic, and so also the first, since by enclisis rs 
so connects itself with the foregoing word that both 
words may be considered rhythmically as one, 
oIwvoktits. The dactylic caesura in the fourth 
metre is named Bucolic, on account of its frequent 
use with the Bucolic poets. 

(10.) Compound words also produce a caesura, 
when the last syllable of their first word falls upon 
the arsis, as Moucra 7roXurpo7rov. 

(11.) Over many caesuras the pronunciation 
glides along without their becoming very percep- 
tible, as avcpa juoi | ivvtire \ Movea. On the other 
hand, some are more marked by a longer interrup- 
tion to the flow of the verse, especially when long 
syllables follow the masculine caesura, or when the 
caesura coincides with punctuation, which breaks 
or concludes the thought, as Mrjviv, aside, 0m \\ 
Hr]\riiaSsu) 'A^tX^oo-. 

(12.) The chief thing required in the hexameter 
is, that it should unite the several series, of which 
it is constructed, into a whole, without losing 
variety, and thus attain variety in unity: the 
verse wants unity, when the caesuras of the words 
coincide with the terminations of the metres. Thus 
Ot(T£T£ | Moixrai \ yi/jXv \ v/j.vo)v \ ay\aa | Stopa — 
Unity prevails when the caesuras do not coincide 
with the ends of the metres, and thus the voice 
slides to the latter over the former, or at least over 
the most of them, as if the foregoing verse ran : 
OIget aoidaojv Movaai docriv ayXao^wvcjv _ o ^, 

, — _, z ^ o, - ~ w, , where the ends of the 

metres are marked by commas, and the caesuras by 
double points. Hence the use of the dactylic and 
spondaic caesuras, strengthed by the sense and 
punctuation, is very much limited ; they occur 
generally in the first metre — as in Iliad, fa. 826 ; 



120 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

V. 501. Those lines which have the bucolic caesura 
are, through the abruptness of their sound, capable 
of great strength, where force is to be expressed — 
e. g: of a billow in a storm — Iliad, S. 424, &c. 

(13.) The masculine caesura occurs in all places 
of the arsis, from the first to the very last — as, 
Iliad, a. 51; Odyssey, e, 294. The feminine caesura 
also may occur in every metre; in the fourth, how- 
ever, it weakens the flow of the verse, when it is 
not strengthened by either the position or punc- 
tuation of the words — as, Iliad, i. 394 ; Odyssey, 
*. 192. 

(14.) Almost universal is the audible caesura, 
masculine or feminine, in the third metre or foot, 
where it divides the verse into two unequal portions. 
So that, for example, in the first book of the Iliad, 
of 611 verses only seven are without this caesura, 
either masculine or feminine, in the third foot — 
where the third foot is altogether without a caesura, 
we sometimes find it included in a proper name of 
at least three syllables — as, Iliad, |3. 494, 714. 
And as, by caesura in the third foot, the verse is 
divided into two portions, so here, by the caesuras 
in the second and fourth feet, it is divided into 
three portions — as, Iliad, a. 145, r\ Aiag \\ ri 

(15.) As the several portions of a verse are com- • 
bined into a whole, by the blending together of the [ 
feet and caesuras, and thus the unity of the verse 
is attained ; so, in the junction of several hex- 
ameters, variety is attained, when the combination ) 
in the several verses takes place in different modes. 
The combination of several hexameters, to the end 
of a proposition, is called a hexametrical or epic 
period. The epic period is divided into different [ 
series by the close of the verses, and by those 
caesuras which coincide with the punctuation. The 
beauty of the epic period depends on this rule, that 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 121 

not only the feet should be varied as dactyls and 
spondees, but that also the different sorts of 
caesuras, both generally, and especially when they 
terminate series, should vary in position ; i. e. 
should occur in different places of the verse. The 
accumulation and rapid succession of different 
caesuras produces a vigorous and manly flow of the 
verse, which is thus divided, now into long, now 
into short portions — is at one time bold and im- 
petuous, at another soft and tranquil — as a model 
of a bold and free-flowing period. Odyssey, *, 299, 
&c, may be cited ; as an example of a softer 
evolution of the series, with chiefly feminine transi- 
tions, compare Odyssey, r, 204, &c. 

(16.) The combination of a mute with the liquid 
p or A, produces for the most part a long syllable 
A no great force ; hence before |3jO, the letter fi 
is sometimes inserted to strengthen the sound, as, 
oju/3/ootoc. Yet this position generally stands 
without any such aid, and rejects even the support 
of the paragogic N ; but if the beginning of the 
word which commences with p or A after a mute 
be iambic ( ^ _ ), so that, without the rejection of 
position, it could not come into epic verse, then 
the position may be rejected. A vowel is never 
short before /3/o, yp, <pp, dp — the other combina- 
tions of the nine mutes, and p and A, allow a 
violation of position in the case above specified, 
1st, in proper names, as, Iliad, j3, 504 ; 2nd, in 
other words, which, without a short syllable pre- 
ceding, cannot stand in the verse, as, Iliad, /3, 
493. This violation of position is also extended 
from the necessary to the convenient, as, Iliad, S, 
j 329. The few instances in which position was 
f violated before kv, yv, have been properly corrected 
in the text, tyvanipav, Iliad, to, 274, is now read 
«cafii//av. The law of position is violated also in 

o 



122 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

several words, especially in proper names, before 
Z; i. e. SA, and SK, Iliad, /3, 634, 465. 

(17.) The arsis lengthens a syllable either at the 
beginning or end of words ; generally, however, 
he production of a final vowel is followed by one 
of the semivowels A, /u, v, p, cr, the sound of which 
easily doubles itself, and thus strengthens the fore- 
going syllable ; the production is also favoured by 
punctuation, or a monosyllable following. When 
a short final syllable is lengthened by arsis, it 
stands, 1, between two long ; 2, as first or last of 
three short ; 3, as the middle of five short ; 4, as 
third and sixth in a series of eight short. Of two 
short neither can be lengthened by arsis, since the 
other would then stand alone in the thesis, and 
thus form a trochee. Four short syllables do not 
stand in one series, but frequently five, when the 
middle is lengthened, as, afispdaXea "ta^wv. Six 
and seven short syllables do not follow in a series, 
but eight, when the third and sixth are lengthened, 
as, Iliad, 0, 389. It is remarked by Hermann that 
the names 'Ar/ott^c, Ur]Xddng, EvpvaOivg, and the 
like, never have the arsis in their middle syllable, i 
always 1 1, never 

(18.) Even in the thesis a short syllable oc- 
casionally stands between two long ; in this case, 
we cannot suppose a production of the syllable, 1 
there being no grounds for such a license, but ! 
merely a want of the second syllable in thesis, 
which is partly concealed by the long syllable pre- 
ceding and following. This takes place in the 
middle of a word, chiefly when the vowel is iota, 
as vTroSeZ'tri, Iliad, I, 73. Short syllables, terminat- 
ing a word, are so used at the end of the fourth 
foot, Iliad, A, 36- 

(19.) As in the above cited instances both arsis 
and thesis were deficient in a time, so, on the other 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 123 

hand, there is sometimes a redundance in the one 
or the other ; and, hence, to preserve the measure 
of the verse, two syllables must be set together, 
(avviZavovat, ovviZriaig), or pronounced together 
{avvzK<pwvovvTa.i, avvzKtywvr\aiQ.) 

a. The arsis in two syllables of two or three 
times. 

b. The thesis in two syllables, or in three of 
three or four times, both cases having a short 
vowel followed by another short, a long, or a 
diphthong. 

Synizesis is most frequent in the case of s t 
thus, 

a. With a, £a, ca, eat, eag : OeoaSIa, Iliad, -y, 27. 
yvuxjsai, Iliad, 0, 367, &c. 

b. With o, to, £oc, cov, tot, cote, fcotr, £§£u£o, 
Iliad, p, 142 ; Iliad, y, 310 ; a^ 18, fee. 

c. With w in £o>, £tj>, swv, £ayz, ew?, twr, a^r: as 
Iliad, a, I; k, 95 ; X. 348, &c. 

Examples are not wanting in which a long vowel 
or diphthong, with the vowels following, is treated 
as one long syllable — as, Iliad, 17, 166 ; j3, 415 ; v, 
275, &c. 

Finally, short or long is combined with long as 
one arsis, or thesis, when they follow one another 
in two separate verses, in the case of tVa, rj, r), §?j, 
/x»j, and of terminations in ?j, w, as, Iliad, v, 777 ; 
e, 349 ; £ , 466 ; f, 5, &c. 

(20.) Hiatus occurs, when of two concurring 
words the former ends with a vowel and the latter 
begins with one, without the verse permitting the 
first to be elided. The hiatus does no injury to 
epic verse, when the first vowel is a long or a 
diphthong, this is then used as a short, except in 
the arsis. Short syllables of this description too 
are sometimes found in the thesis — Thus, in the 
first and second feet, Iliad, 0, 209 ; cr, 145. In 

g 2 



124 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

the third foot this hiatus occurs in the case of rj» 
which, as the word of separation, concentrates the 
tone in itself, and is thus strengthened — Iliad, a, 
27 : Once in the case of kcu — Iliad, 7, 392. It is 
more common in the fourth thesis — Iliad, /3, 231. 
Jn the case of at it is common only where this is 
separated by punctuation from the following word, 
and thus supported against hiatus — Iliad, *, 685. 
Besides the hiatus of long vowels — that of short 
vowels occurs to an equal extent — sometimes in the 
arsis, as, Iliad, j3, 832. The place of this hiatus 
is also common in the thesis, as well in feminine as 
in dactylic caesuras. The hiatus of a short vowel 
is not offensive, if the short vowel be such that it 
does not permit elision ; e. g. if it be iota of the 
dative singular, third declension, or v — Iliad, j3, 6: 
or, if the two words be divided by punctuation, by 
which elision is prevented, as, Iliad, a, 565 ; or, 
in the feminine caesura of the third foot, since by 
this the verse is divided into two halves, and thus 
a closer combination of the words, which apos- 
trophe would produce, is hindered — as, Iliad, /3, 
697. All these limits are, however, often trangressed 
by the hiatus of short vowels — and, were the hiatus 
universal, we might recognize it as a peculiarity of 
epic verse, and so let the matter rest ; — but since 
it is as often removed by apostrophe, we can only 
explain its existence, by supposing that the words, 
l)efore which it occurs, had the digamma originally. 



CHAPTER VII. 



INTRODUCTION TO THE ODYSSEY. 

1. The Iliad and Odyssey were generally con- 
sidered to be the compositions of the same author. 
This opinion was grounded on the prevalent belief 
of the ancients, which appears from Pindar, Hero- 
dotus, Longinus, &c. &c, on the similarity of the 
style and language of the two poems, and the re- 
petition or modification in the Odyssey of several 
lines which appear in the Iliad. It appears, how- 
ever, from a passage in Seneca, that even at a 
remote period it was made a question whether they 
were composed by the same author, and those who 
thought they were not were called ol xioplZovrsg. 

2. The arguments for a difference of authors, 
and the more modern composition of the Odyssey, 
are the following : — (1st.) In the Iliad, Charis, 
in the Odyssey, Venus, is the wife of Vulcan. — 
(2d.) In the Iliad, Iris, in the Odyssey, Mercury, 
is the messenger of the Gods. In the twenty- 
fourth bk. of the Iliad, Mercury, who conducts 
Priam to the Grecian camp, is not simply a mes- 
senger but a conductor, having something to do. 
When Virgil employs Iris as a messenger he 
imitates the Iliad; for in his time Mercury was the 
courier of Olympus, as he is in the Odyssey. — Hor. 
Car. 1. 10.— (3d.) In the Iliad, Crete has 10O 
cities, in the Odyssey, 90. — (4th.) In the Iliad, 
Neleus has twelve sons, in the Odyssey, three sons 
and one daughter. — (5.) There are about 1000 
lines identical in the two poems, and from a com- 



126 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

parison of the passages it is plain that the verses 
in the Odyssey are a modification of those in the 
Iliad. — (6.) Many words are changed ; thus the 
strings of the lyre in the Iliad are made of Xhov 
(flax), in the Odyssey of fuorpt^Ec ivrspov olog 
(sheep's gut) ; in the Odyssey, we first hear of 
Alex 1 ?, properly an open house for the reception of 
the indigent, and afterwards an assembly for con- 
versation. Possessions have lost the name icr^ara, 
and are called ^p^ara, from their use. Syllables 
are abbreviated, as ayporrig for orypotwrTjc, Ota-trig 
for QevttIcfioq, &c. — (7.) The decreased simplicity 
of the manners in the Odyssey. — (8.) The altered 
aspect of the mythology. (The manners and my- 
thology we shall consider more at large.) It should 
be remarked that in every instance of difference, 
the statement in the Odyssey is invariably that 
which agrees with the finally prevailing habits and 
creed of succeeding ages. 

(3.) The manners of the Odyssey rest on the 
same heroic base as those of the Iliad. The man- 
ners and occupation of Nausicaa, 6, 72, and many 
other instances, shew the continued existence of 
that oriental simplicity which is so characteristic 
of the Iliad. The difference is one of degree, not 
of kind, and the two poems present, respectively, 
pictures of the maturity and decline of that primi- 
tive system which holds the same relation to the 
matured civilization of ancient times that chivalry 
does to the manners of modern Christendom. The 
active or exclusive existence of either of these two 
systems was not very long-lived ; but the impres- 
sion made by each on the serious poetry of the 
ancients, and the sprightly poetry of the moderns, 
was pre-eminently enduring. The difference of 
manners and refinement may be remarked in the 
following instances: — (1.) Telemachus, the court 
of Alcinous, and the suitors of Penelope, seem 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 



127 



removed to the third and fourth generation from 
the God-like warriors who fought on the plain of 
Troy. They appear as much astonished at the 
strength and courage of those heroes as we our- 
selves. — The peremptory and harsh demeanour of 
Telemachus towards his mother as compared with 
the respectful tone of Hector, savours of that spirit 
of comparative neglect with which mothers, and 
women in general, were treated among the Greeks 
in subsequent ages, so evident in Euripides.— (3.) 
With the exception of Helen, whose character is 
similarly drawn as in the Iliad, the women of the 
Odyssey occasionally discover a modernism and 
want of that heroic simplicity so observable in the 
Iliad. They are still, however, very superior to 
the women of the Greek drama. — (4.) In the 
household of Penelope there is a separation and 
subordination of the slaves very different from the 
familiarity and almost equal ministry of the master 
and servant observable in that of Laertes, which 
is a representation of the elder system. — (5.) In 
the Iliad there is no mention of nets or other in- 
struments for obtaining food, or for household use, 
that are spoken of in the Odyssey, nor are columns 
noticed in any descriptions of the Iliad. 

4. In the mythology there is a striking change. 
In the Iliad the will of Jove is supreme ; every 
thing is conducted under his immediate superin- 
tendence : in the Odyssey the action of Jupiter is 
faint and partial ; he says little and directs less. 
Something of the blissful inactivity of an epicurean, 
heaven seems to have become the portion of the 
fierce and restless Deities of the Iliad. Minerva 
alone interferes with any effect in the conduct of 
the poem; but she appears more as the allegorized 
understanding, or reasoning faculty, than the strong 
and dreadful Pallas of the Iliad. In the Odyssey 
the system of apotheosis of acknowledged mortals 



128 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

for the first time appears, there being no traces of 
it in the Iliad. Thus, in the latter, Castor and 
Pollux are mentioned in the ordinary language 
denoting death and burial ; in the former we have 
the account of their alternate resuscitation. In 
the Necyomanteia, where Ulysses sees Hercules, the 
apotheosis of the hero is expressly mentioned. In 
the Iliad, even in the dialogue of Sarpedon and 
Tlepolimus, he is always mentioned as a man. In 
the Odyssey there is an unequivocal proof of the 
notoriety of the oracle of Delphi. — Od. 8, 79. It 
is doubtful whether the oracle existed when the 
Iliad was composed. The splendour and riches of 
the Temple of Apollo at Delphi are described as 
proverbial. — II. 9, 404. And the oracle of Jupiter 
at Dodona is expressly mentioned. — II. 16, 235. 
Throughout both Iliad and Odyssey, Phoebus is 
never mentioned as identical with the sun, as in 
the more modern mythology ; the sun, lN HA*oe, is 
always introduced distinctly, and almost always as 
the natural object. In the Odyssey the sun is 
twice mentioned as a mythological personage — 12, 
133, 376. The later Greeks seem to have consoli- 
dated three Gods into one ; for Ilcm'jwv, the Phy- 
sician of the Gods, was originally as clearly 
distinguished from Apollo as "HXtoc- The most 
remarkable passage in the Odyssey for the aspect 
which it presents of its mythology is the Necyo- 
manteia, or intercourse of Ulysses with the shades 
of the dead. It would appear that no actual 
descent, such as that of iEneas in the iEneid, was 
contemplated by Homer, but that the whole ground 
plan is that of an act of Asiatic evocation only (as 
the woman of Endor is commonly understood to 
have evoked Samuel). Lucian, who combines the 
Homeric rites of evocation with an actual descent, 
makes the evocator a Babylonian, and disciple of 
Zoroaster, and lays the scene near the Euphrates. 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 129 

The Necyomanteia is remarkable for the gloomy 
and dreary revelation it makes of the condition of 
the future life ; it says nothing of Elysian fields 
for piety, or wisdom, or valour ; hence it is cen- 
sured by Plato. In a previous passage the Elysian 
plain is described in very different language— 4, 
563. Either the descriptions are inconsistent, or 
the Elysium of the Odyssey is a distinct place from 
the Asphodel meadow of Hades. Bochart derives 
'HXiKTiov from the Phenican Elysoth, joy. All the 
Homeric names of places or persons westward of 
Greece, are Phenician in their origin. Indeed, 
from the Phenicians only could any Greek of the 
age of Homer learn any thing about them. Cadiz 
and the plains of Andalusia seem to have some 
claim to be the Phenician original of the Homeric 
Elysium. It is placed far in the west, and even to 
this day the Moors of Africa pray every Friday 
to be restored to the Paradise of Grenada and 
Malaga. A curious particular in the Necyomanteia 
is, that the ghosts, fleshless and boneless though 
they be, cannot recognise or speak to Ulysses till 
they have drunk of the blood in the trench. 

5. The plan of the Odyssey is different from that 
of the Iliad, and the difference imports a great 
advance in the art of composition. In this poem 
the order of narration is no longer confined to the 
straightforward line of a single series of events, as 
in the Iliad, but we have two corresponding, though 
distinct parts, proceeding at first in parallel direc- 
tions, but at length meeting and constituting the 
entire body of the story in the house of Eumseus. 

Those who doubt the individual authorship of the 
Iliad may consistently maintain that of the Odyssey. 
The composition is dissimilar, and there are suf- 
ficient reasons of a moral nature in the manners 
of the poem for assigning a considerably later age 
to it. Knight thought nothing less than the lapse 

o3 



130 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

of a century could account for the refinement or 
alteration of the manners. Milman adopts a smaller 
period. Coleridge inclines to the longer period ; 
his reason for this is that the progress is generally 
very slow from the first feudal, or clannish period, 
up to the establishment of commerce and municipal 
institutions. After that period is attained, the 
development goes on at a greatly accelerated speed ; 
but that point had not been attained when the 
principal parts of the Odyssey were composed, for 
piracy was still honourable (as appears from Nestor 
asking Telemachus andPisistratus were they pirates, 
after he had entertained them. — 3, 69.) And yet 
there is a great refinement and progress in the 
manners and civilization. It is possible that the 
Odyssey may have been the composition of a poet 
living at a time in which the facilities for writing 
had greatly multiplied, though many of the customs 
of an earlier age were still in partial force ; and 
even on the Wolfian hypothesis the separate con- 
stituent parts of the Odyssey must be admitted to 
be in themselves larger and more continuous than 
those of the Iliad, and the whole poem, as referring 
to the adventures of a single person, is more linked 
and continuous throughout, than can be said of the 
vast chronicle of the heroes before Troy. Yet 
Coleridge, on the whole, conceives that the Odys- 
sey, as one poem, has been constructed out of 
poetry not originally conceived uno flatu, though, 
no doubt, as with that of the Iliad, it was con- 
ceived uno intuitu ; for when such considerable 
portions of the poem are cut away as spurious 
(portions which formed part of the Odyssey known 
to Herodotus and Plato) by those who contend for 
the individual authorship .of what they leave, what 
reliance can any longer be put in the ancient tra- 
dition and belief of the total unity ? These pas- 
sages are rejected, because of certain verbal or 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 131 

metrical peculiarities, which indicate a later age ; 
but other passages may be rejected, with greater 
reason, on account of the contrast of luxury and 
refinement they present to the ignorance and gross- 
ness of other passages. According to Wolf, you 
can no more call this or that passage spurious, be- 
cause it was contributed at a later period than any 
other part before the age of Pisistratus, than you 
could so brand the successive additions of an indi- 
vidual author in his own work. The Episode, in 
which Ulysses gives a narrative of his adventures, 
is by far the most delightful, as it is by far the most 
ancient of these subsequently favourite comple- 
ments of the heroic poem. The Odyssey is re- 
markable for its perfect propriety and easy order ; 
narrative and dialogue succeeding alternately, be- 
stowing on it its great and peculiar charm, viz : its 
uncommon air of trutli and reality. It is, indeed, 
as a book of adventures, possessing the same inte- 
rest, but superior in purpose and morality, to 
Eobinson Crusoe, or Sinbad the Sailor, that the 
Odyssey is presented to us in its proper and most 
pleasing light ; whilst in the Iliad we are, for the 
most part, sensible of the prominence of the poetry, 
as such, in the Odyssey we are more certainly 
attracted by the linked sweetness and interest of 
the story itself. 

6. The air of reality in the Odyssey, particularly 
in that passage in which Ulysses is lodged in the 
house of the faithful Eumseus, is such that we can- 
not doubt that the picture he presents is a mere 
stamp or reflection of contemporary society. The 
Iliad, the Odyssey, and the poem of the Cid, are 
the only heroic poems in which the manners are 
the genuine manners of the poet's own time. When 
a system of manners (not the moral qualities, the 
passions and sentiments, which are in substance 
the same in every age and place, but the courtesies, 



132 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

habits, domestic relations, the tone between hus- 
band and wife, master and servant, &c.) is to be 
adapted to the story of a former age and former 
nation, the utmost that can be done is to avoid 
anachronisms or improbabilities, whilst the ease, 
the life, the force with which the poet can paint 
the habits and manners of his own contemporaries 
must be wanting. This facility and freedom from 
constraint, the life and force, the effect of contem- 
porary existence, is more conspicuous in the Odys- 
sey than in the Iliad ; because the picture of rural 
and domestic life presented in the former has not 
been so frequently copied as the battles and speeches 
of the latter, inasmuch as it did not suit the plans 
of more recent poets, and so it remains in all its 
freshness to the present day. The Odyssey, as a 
poem, is absolutely unique, for though Virgil and 
Tasso have borrowed particular passages from it 
more largely than from the Iliad, the character and 
scope of their poems are quite dissimilar to those 
of the Odyssey, which consist in detailing the 
changing fortunes of a single man, not as a general 
warring with armies against a city, but as an exile, 
compassing, by his skill, courage, and patience, his 
return to his own home. It is in the combination 
of hair-breadth escapes and moving accidents with 
the high moral purpose of Ulysses, in the contrast 
of the determined will of man triumphant over the 
transient and vain bafflings of winds and waves, 
gods and monsters, that the secret and spring of 
the universal charm of the Odyssey lie concealed. 
7. The prominent characters of the Odyssey 
are less numerous than those of the Iliad. — 
With the exception of the exquisite sketches 
of Helen, Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinous, and 
Euryclea,the nurse, Ulysses, Penelope, Telemachus 
and Eumseus, are the only figures that stand in 
relief during the greater portion of the poem. 



TREATI3E ON* HOMER. 133 

Ulysses is rather equal to than like the Ulysses of 
the Iliad, and seems to be more in his element in 
the midst of adventures and tempests, and disguise, 
than when openly counselling and fighting on the 
Plain of Troy. In his speeches, conduct, and the 
sway he acquires over all around him, we perceive 
the man of genius as well as the hero, and Horace 
justly remarks that Homer " utile proposuit nobis 
exemplar Ulyssem," of what courage, talent and 
perseverance are capable of effecting — in thought, 
manner, word, and deed, the exact opposite of the 
knight-errant. It is worthy of notice that in no 
instance have the authors of the Iliad and Odyssey 
drawn, what is called, a perfect character. We 
meet with no paragons of virtue or vice. Man is 
represented as he is — full of inconsistencies, the 
effects of the flooding and ebbing of the passions. 
The natural Greek, in Homers days, looked on no 
means as base to escape danger — the haughty 
Roman scorned to owe his life to any thing but his 
virtue and fortitude. 

One marked difference between the Iliad and 
Odyssey consists in this — that in the former poem 
there is no hero, in the modern sense of the term ; 
no one person whose actions and words, whose 
danger and success, constitute the substance and 
the object of the poem. The impression of Achilles 
is very faint upon nearly one-half of the Iliad. The 
poem is not an Achilleid, but an Iliad, as it was 
very rightly named by antiquity ; but the Odyssey, 
or Ulysseid, is a story exclusively concerning and 
devoted to the honour of the one man, Ulysses ; 
he is ever before the eyes in some shape or other. 
The Iliad may be compared to one of the historical 
plays of Shakspeare, in which a Henry, a Harry, 
a Hotspur, a Clendower, or a Douglas, are so 
many centres, to each of which our affections are 



134? TREATISE ON HOMER. 

attracted in turn. The Odyssey, to one of those 
plays in which one individual, as Hamlet, or Mac- 
beth, or Othello, or Lear, absorbs all the attention. 

The character of Ulysses is, in itself, the perfect 
idea of an accomplished man of the world after the 
manner of the ancient Paganism. It fills and satis- 
fies the mind. Not one of the characters in the 
Iliad, with, perhaps, the exception of Hector, satis- 
fies the mind in and by itself. Every one of them 
is regarded collaterally with, or in contrast to, 
another of them ; and the pleasure we receive is 
the mixed result of the action of all. But Ulysses 
is his own parallel ; others are referred to him, 
but he to himself. With the exception of the great 
intellectual creations of Shakspeare, the Ulysses of 
the Odyssey is the most perfect, the most entire 
conception of character to be found any where in 
mere human literature. A thoroughly great man 
of the world rather dazzles the imagination than 
touches the heart. To engage our affections some 
passion is required. Ulysses has a passion — he is 
home-sick — he longs for Ithaca and his own fire- 
side. This brings him at once in contact with the 
common feeling of every man in the world. This is 
beautifully expressed in 5, 151, 204. 

Penelope does not interest us in an equal de- 
gree with her husband. She is chaste and 
prudent ; yet she goes a considerable length 
in the way of coquetry with her suitors. — 2, 91. 
She permits the spoil of ,her husband's sub- 
stance, and the life of her son to be endan- 
gered by the violence of the men whom she 
had the means of leading in another direction. 
Yet the general coldness and dryness of the cha- 
racter of Penelope may make us feel, with a livelier 
sympathy, the beautifully imagined scene of her re- 
cognition of Ulysses — the joy, the intervening 



TRE\THE ON HOMZR. 135 

doubt, the slow conviction, and the final burst of 
tenderness and love — 23. 205. In this exqu: 
passage we again perceive an equal master}- with 
that which drew the domestic fondne iro- 

mache, and the matronly elegance of Helen, and 
has left all three as convincing proofs that match- 
delicaey. and gentleness, and truth, were 
placed by p<: e bosom of women, in an age 

in which the refinements and graces of modern 
society were utterly unknown. 

Telemachus is very skilfully drawn, so as to be 
always subordinate to his father, and yet sufficier. 
full of promise and opening prowess to justify hw 
heroic blood. Thus — 21. 12 8 — he is on the poi 
of bending the bow, which the suitors were unable 
to achieve. Yet he is no: ing character on 

the whole. His demeanour towards his mothe: 
generally unaffectionate. and his disposition ifl rather 
interested. T rth, however, of hischarao 

opens as the action of the poem advances ; and in 
the latter books, after he is entrusted with the 
secret of the hero's return, he seems to have a 
dignity and energy imparted to him beyond his 
natural powers. 

Eumseus is a character less within the reach of 
modern imitation than an 

He is a genuine country gentleman of the age of 
ner. His character is a very complete concep- 
tion and pecimen of rural life and 
habits in Home: The easy and genuine 
manners of old Eurvclea, the nurse, are well set 
forth— 1st bk., 434.* 

8. T :he adventure's of Ulysses and 

ompanions with I only picturesque 

and dramatic, but al tains a r ;ing 

and complete allegory. Though, perhaps. Lord 
Bacon is ricrht in thinking that there was but li: 
of such inwardness in the poet's own meaning, ev 






136 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

part of the tale (Od. 10, 414) illustrates the use 
and abuse of worldly pleasure. It is imitated by 
Milton in Jiis Comus, in which, however, the spiri- 
tual and intellectual, rather than the moral or 
prudential nature, is exhibited as in danger from, 
and triumphing over, the charms of worldly plea- 
sure. 

The story of the Sirens also embodies the same 
moral truth, that no man can listen without de- 
struction to the enchanting voice of worldly plea- 
sure, unless he bind himself hand and foot by the 
strong fetters of duty and self-controul ; and even 
then the best safety consists in physical inability to 
comply and a rapid removal from the scene of 
temptation. 

Bochart derives Circe from thePhenician,Kirkar, 
to destroy; Siren (tuneful) from Sir, to sing ; Scylla 
from Scol, destruction : Charybdis from Chorobdan, 
the chasm of ruin. 

9. In frequency, length, and picturesqueness of 
similes, the Odyssey is very far behind the Iliad ; 
instead of more than 200, there are less than 50, 
and these, with a few exceptions, are short and 
imitated from those of the elder poem. The most 
spirited of these exceptions are the two (19, 518, 
and 22, 401) which represent respectively Penelope 
in her widowed state, and Ulysses standing in the 
midst of the slaughtered suitors. In the first the 
description of the nightingale shews much accuracy 
of observation. In the Virgilian imitation, the 
vagueness of the description in no respect dis- 
tinguishes the nightingale^ song from that of any 
bird. The other simile is more in the spirit of the 
Iliad. Another very graphic simile describes the 
rousing of a wild boar by Ulysses in a recess of 
Parnassus (19, 439) — and ships are likened to sea- 
horses (4, 708) — as also in the Icelandic poetry. 

Passages so distinctly grouped and pictured are 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 137 

not numerous in the Odyssey, nor can we account 
for its inferiority to the Iliad in this respect, on the 
score of the difference of subject-matter and style. 
There is, however, a compensation for this in the 
vigour and liveliness of more diffused descriptions. 
A singularly striking effort of imagination occurs 
in a passage, which seems only applicable upon the 
Scotch doctrine of second sight.— 20, 345. 

10. It has been observed already that a change 
in the form of several words is perceptible in the 
Odyssey — that change is invariably shown in an 
abbreviation of syllables or time, as is always the 
case in the process of refining a language for the 
purposes of society. They thus indicate a date 
for the composition of the Odyssey subsequent to 
that of the Iliad. Thus a-yporije for aypotwrrig 
vtovvfxoQ for viovvfivog, Oiairic for Oecnriaiog — AarY^i? 
and j5vj5\tvov are only found in the Odyssey, and 
Maaarjvrj, of which no notice is taken in the cata- 
logue in the Iliad. Many other instances may be 
found, and in every instance the usage of the Odys- 
sey became the usage of succeeding times. How- 
ever, in placing the indicative mood after Itti)v and 
other adverbs, in cases when, according to regular 
grammar, the subjunctive is always used, both 
poems agree. 

31. The versification is essentially the same as 
that of the Iliad, though, perhaps, less dactylic, 
and consequently less rapid and continuous in its 
course ; in variety, sweetness, and harmony, it is 
almost equally delightful and equally inimitable. 

12. The Odyssey is not so high an effort of the 
imagination as the Iliad, but it is as pregnant with 
moral and prudential wisdom, as full of life and 
variety, and much more romantic. The Iliad ex- 
cites the most admiration, the Odyssey the most 
interest. All the latter half is unequalled as a 
mere story, and it contains situations and incidents, 



138 



TKEATIS 



than which no poet ever conceived any thing more 
grand or spirit-stirring — as the passage (which 
Plato remarks) where Ulysses leaps on the threshold, 
discards his rags, and shews himself to the astonished 
suitors — and the passage preceding this, where he 
takes up, handles, strings, and twangs the mighty 
bow.— 21, 404. The passage which describes the 
shipwreck of Ulysses after he left the Island of 
Calypso, is equally graphic and vigorous. — 5, 291. 
Whilst we read these passages, or indeed almost 
any part of the poem, we are at a loss to discover 
evidence of that declining age and enfeebled imagi- 
nation which are often imputed to the authors of 
the Odyssey. On the contrary, the fertility of in- 
vention, the range of knowledge, and the artifice of 
narrative displayed in it, denote as much vigour as 
maturity of intellect. There are, indeed, some few 
passages in the Odyssey which are very displeasing, 
as the treatment of Melanthius— 22, 474— and the 
female servants — 22, 457— than which nothing 
could be conceived more bloody, brutal, or disgust- 
ing. This is a blot on the otherwise grand and 
interesting picture of the righteous triumph of 
Ulysses. As to all that follows the 269th line of 
the 23d Bk. being rejected as spurious, it must be 
acknowledged that many passages in it are weak, 
huddled, and unnatural ; on the other hand it may 
be said, that the speech of Agamemnon in Hades, 
in which he narrates the death-fight of Achilles 
and the funeral rites performed over his corpse— 
the destruction of the house and garden of Laertes, 
and the scene of the mutual recognition of Ulysses 
and his aged father, are amongst the most beauti- 
ful and interesting parts of the whole poem. 

13. Taken together, the Iliad and Odyssey are 
assuredly two of the grandest works of the human 
intellect. They may be looked on in the combined 
spirit of heroic poetry in the abstract, rather than 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 139 

as the poems of any particular poet. In them we 
can discover no peculiarities of thinking or feeling, 
no system, no caprice — all is wide, diffused, univer- 
sal — like the primal light before it was gathered 
up and parcelled off into greater and lesser lumi- 
naries, to rule the day and the night. The diffe- 
rence in this respect is great between the Homeric 
and all the Greek poetry of the subsequent ages. 
It is no longer the muse speaking, but a Theban, 
or an Athenian, or a Sicilian poet ; the individual 
appears ; the poems are unlike each other. The 
same may be said of hundreds of old Spanish 
romances on the Oid and the heroes of Ronces- 
valles, and of the ancient English ballads on the 
Knights of the Round Table and the Morte Arthur. 
They are the productions of various authors ; and 
yet no critic could class them under different 
heads, distinguished by any difference of thought 
or feeling. As the rights of citizens and the habits 
of civil society became more precisely defined, the 
poet's compositions are more or less stamped with 
the mark of his own character. A man who had 
not read a line of the works of Milton or Waller 
could not fail to perceive distinct authorship in any 
two pieces that could be selected from their poetry. 
So it is with the Greek poets after the Homeric 
age. 

In the Iliad will be found the sterner lessons of 
public justice or public expedience, and the ex- 
amples are for statesmen and generals. In the 
Odyssey we are taught the maxims of private pru- 
dence and individual virtue, and the instances are 
applicable to all mankind ; in both, honesty and 
fortitude are commended, and set up for imitation ; 
in both, treachery and cowardice are condemned, 
and exposed for our scorn and avoidance. Born, 
like the river of Egypt, in secret light, they yet 
roll on their great collateral streams, wherein a 



140 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

thousand poets have bathed their sacred heads, 
and thence drunk beauty and truth, and all sweet 
and noble harmonies. Known to no man is the 
time or place of their gushing forth from the eartlTs 
bosom; but their course has been amongst the 
fields and by the dwellings of men, and our children 
now sport on their banks and quaff their salutary 
waters. 

14. In the government of Phseacia, as described 
in the Odyssey, the mixture of monarchy, aristo- 
cracy, and democracy, is not less clearly marked 
than in the British Constitution — one chief, twelve 
peers, and the assembly of the people shared the 
supreme authority. The undoubted prerogatives 
of kings were religious supremacy (hence when 
kings were expelled from Athens and Rome, the 
religious office and title of king were continued in 
both) and military command ; they also often ex- 
ercised judicial authority, but in all civil concerns 
their authority was limited. And though monarchies 
were in some degree hereditary, yet Homer admits 
a right in the people to interfere and direct the 
succession, as in the case of Telemachus. In the 
trial mentioned, Iliad 18, 497, no mention is made 
of a king — the council of elders decide the matter. 
And in Iliad 16, 386, where the vengeance of 
Jupiter is denounced against those who give unjust 
judgments, it is not the tribunal of kings that is 
spoken of, but the assembly of the people. 

15. The latest event mentioned in the Odyssey, 
is the restoration of Orestes to his fathers throne, 
after living seven years in exile in Athens — in the 
eighth he killed iEgistheus and Olytemnestra, 
mounted the throne of Argos, and became a 
powerful prince. 

16. In the Odyssey Homer calls the northern 
division of the country Hellas, and the southern 
Argos, including under the two the whole of Greece. 



TBEATISE ON HOMER. 141 

In the thirty-seventh line of the catalogue he in- 
cludes the whole nation under the two names, 
Panhellenes and Achaioi ; the former being in- 
tended for the northern Greeks, and the latter for 
the southern. The appellation Danaoi, marks the 
southern Greeks only or chiefly. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



MISCELLANEOUS QUESTIONS. 



1. How long after the Trojan war does Mitford 
place Homer, and how does he argue from the 
silence of the poet I 

2. What is the date usually assigned to the 
Trojan war, in reference to the first Olympiad, the 
building of Rome, and the Christian sera ? 

3. What is the last historical event alluded to 
by Homer? What is the date of the return of 
the Heraclidse, and the -ZEolic, and Ionic migra- 
tions ? 

4. What is Wood's opinion of Homer's knowledge 
of alphabetic writing, and what is that of Wolfs? 
Whence did the Greeks receive their alphabet, 
and by whom is it supposed to have been com- 
pleted ? 

5. Mention some of the other poems ascribed 
to Homer, besides the Iliad and Odyssey ? Who 
were the Cyclic poets ? 

6. What is the opinion of more recent critics on 
the subject of Homer's poems ? To whom do they 
ascribe them ? Why is the Odyssey thought to be 
the work of a more recent age ? 

7. What can we learn of Homer's notions of 
geography I How far east does he seem to have 
known? How far west ? What is his wkzcivoqI 
Where, and in what direction, did it flow ! How 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 143 

is it mentioned in the Iliad ? What seems to have 
been his notion of the form of the earth ? 

8. What greater knowledge of the west is mani- 
fested in the Odyssey than in the Iliad ? How far 
west does each mention ? 

9. State Homer's view of the state of the dead, 
and the residence of the disembodied spirits ? 

10. Who are the poets supposed to have lived 
before Homer? What poets are mentioned by 
him ? What is the age of the Orphic hymns ? 

1 1 . What is the earliest authenticated mention 
of Homer in any classic author ? Is there extant 
any attributed to a contemporary ? 

12. Give the derivation of paxpqSoi, and an 
account of who they were, and how they differed 
from aoidol I 

13. How is the variety of dialect in Homer's 
poems accounted for ? What are the origin and 
progress of the various dialects of Greece 2 What 
is the KOiV7/ SiaXeKTog, and when did it arise 2 

14. Give Thiersch's explanation of the formation 
of Homeric versification ? Where does the me- 
trical ictus fall in each foot ? and what effect has 
it ? Define ictus, arsis, and thesis. 

15. With what moods are ottot^ "iva and jut) found 
in Homer ? 

16. Give the critical history of the digamma I 
How is its presence in Homer proved by Bentley 
and others? What is its pronunciation? Is 
Homer consistent in his use of it ? 

17. What parts of the Odyssey seem intended 
to convey an allegorical meaning ? 

18. Horace's praise of Homer as a moral 
writer? 

19. Distinguish c£s et, from t& vide ; irapa for 
7rapE<rTi, from irapa apud ; ofiwg tamen, from ojxwg 
simul I 



144 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

20. What is the opinion of Herodotus with re- 
gard to Homer's writings \ 

21. How long after Homer's time, were the 
books of his poems collected in Greece, and re- 
duced to their present form ? 

22. To whom is ascribed the honour of making 
Homer generally known in Greece ? 

23. What is the fanciful theory of Bryant con- 
cerning the birth-place and history of Homer I 

24 In an ode ascribed to Homer, how does he 
describe himself? 

25. How does it appear that he wrote before 
the return of the Heraclidse I 

26. What difference between his dialect and 
pure Ionic I 

27. Difference between IgtoSokyj and larow&r}. 

28. What appears to have been the doctrine of 
a future state in the time of Homer ? 

29. Mention the peculiarities which distinguish 
Homer's mythology from later systems ? 

SO. What particulars does Homer relate of the 
way in which Chryseis and Briseis fell into the 
hands of the Greeks ? From what towns were they I 

31. What is stated as to the number of men 
that each of the Greek ships carried ? Of how 
many ships and men did the whole armament con- 
sist ? By what influence were so large a number 
of chieftains from various parts brought to join in 
the expedition ? 

32. 1A.B. 535. Deduce from this line Homer's 
country \ 

33. IA.B. 649. What account does Homer give 
elsewhere of Crete and its inhabitants ? 

34. Shew from first two books, what state and 
form of government Homer appears to describe as 
existing in Greece \ 

35. What different materials were used for 
writing upon in Greece in early times ? 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 145 

36. What does Homer say about writing, and 
the instrument and materials for it in his time ? 

37. Is it your opinion, that his poems were ori- 
ginally written, or not. \ 

38. If not, when were they probably first com- 
mitted to writing ? 

39. What internal evidence marks the country 
of Homer ? 

40. When did Homer live, according to Hero- 
dotus \ 

41. What circumstances were favourable to the 
preservation of his poems, supposing them un- 
written ? 

42. What share had Lycurgus, Solon, and 
Pisistratus, in the preservation of his poems ? 

43. When and by whom was the Iliad divided v 
into twenty-four books ? 

44. How were the different parts quoted, before 
such division \ 

45. Does it follow that the several parts were 
considered as distinct poems 2 

46. What did Bentley mean by calling the 
Iliad a sequel of songs ? 

47. What were the subjects of the Kvirpia "Eirij, 
'Eiriyovoi, 'iXiag juiKpa ? 

48. Who were the T/owec, Avkioi, and AapSavoi, 
and their respective leaders ? 

49. Explain the terms, TrapaSomg, 6 SiaaKevaa- 
T))e, ol ^jjpi^ovrtg ? 

. 50. What is the interval, according to the re- 
ceived chronology, between the fall of Troy and 
the sera of Homer \ 

51. What arguments have been brought to 
prove that Homer lived nearer to the time of the 
Trojan war, and how near ? 

52. What account do you give of the language 
of Homer, and by what name do you designate it I 

H 



146 TREATISE ON HOMEB. 

53. In what particulars do the dialects of Ho- 
mer and Herodotus differ ? 

54. Draw a map of ancient Troas, showing the 
courses of the Scamander and Simois, the situation 
of Troy, and the position of the Grecian camp ? 

55. Point out the principal features of the 
ground between the city and the fleet, as they are 
alluded to by Homer ? 

56. Cite some instances from Homer in which 
the sound of the verse is adapted to the sense I 
Have other poets imitated him in this \ 

57. " Neutra pluralia gaudent verbo singulari.*' 
How is this rule observed by Homer, and the 
Attic writers respectively ? Specify some of the 
cases in which the latter put the verb in the plural I 

58. What evidence do the Iliad and Odyssey 
furnish us — First, as to the probable birth-place 
of Homer. Second, the time in which he lived. 
Third, the countries he visited ? 

59. State the principal points of distinction, 
which have given rise to the opinion, that the 
Odyssey is more recent than the Iliad ? 

60. What ground does Herodotus assign for 
rejecting the opinion prevalent in his time, that 
the Kvirpia tirta were composed by Homer \ 

61. What degree of progress in the arts and 
sciences do the poems of Homer indicate I 

62. Give in substance the testimony of Thu- 
cydides, as to the historical accuracy of Homer ? 

63. What date does Cicero give to Homer! 
What Strabo ? 

64. By whom were the rhapsodists first allowed 
to sing at the Panathenaea \ Derivation of 
pa\pu)$oi I First rhapsodist mentioned I How did 
they grow into disrepute \ Prize given to them, 
and the name they derived from it \ 

65. From what peculiarities of description should 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 14)!f 

we conclude that Homer was from the coast of 
Asia Minor? 

66. From what peculiarities in the sacrifice and 
language, has it been contended that he was an 
.ZEolian. 

67. What honours did the Chians and Argives 
pay to his memory ? 

68. Mention the titles of some of the poems 
that have been ascribed to Homer, with the names 
of the writers to whom they have been afterwards 
attributed ? 

69. Was Helen ever at Troy I What is Hero- 
dotus'' opinion ? 

70. What authority is there from Homer for 
supposing that Paris and Helen went first to 
Phoenicia and Egypt ? 

71. What time appears from Homer (B. 24), 
to have elapsed between Helen's arriving at Troy, 
and the death of Hector ? What time, therefore, 
must Agamemnon have taken in collecting the 
Grecian forces ? 

72. What were the first principal IkSogsiq of 
Homer % What was r\ Ik vapQr\Koq \ And that of 
Aristarchus ? When and where did Aristarchus 
live \ 

73. How often and by whom had Troy been 
taken before the expedition of Agamemnon I 

74. iEn. ii. 504, ii. 190, iii. 27 ; in these pas- 
sages of Virgil, how is he unfaithful to the times 
of Homer ? 

75. What time is taken up in the Iliad ? Com- 
pare the -ZEneid and Paradise Lost with it in this 
respect % What is the argument of the Iliad 2 

76. What is Aristotle's definition of Unity of 
Plot \ Is there any violation of the unity in con- 
tinuing the poem after Hector's death I Would 
the same argument apply to the continuing the 
iEneid after the death of Turnus I 



148 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

77. Distinguish between Sfj/uoc and c\?juoc, %iov 
and c7oi.', Sioycv^c and cioyevrig, 6tw and &'ti>, taat 
and iaoi, ttIw and Trtw I 

78. What dates do you assign to the Trojan 
war, the return of the Heraclida?, the iEolic and 
Ionic migrations, and the age of Homer ? 

79. At what period do you place the introduc- 
tion of alphabetic writing among the Greeks ? 

80. Explain what is meant by unity of action 
an an epic poem, and show how it is exemplified in 
the Odyssey \ 

81. On what syllable of each foot does the 
metrical ictus fall in heroic verse, and what effect 
has it on the quantity of that syllable ? 

82. Trace the progress of the various dialects of 
Greece? Explain the nature of the digamma? 
What did Bentley conceive to be its proper pro- 
nunciation \ On what grounds is it introduced 
into Homer's poems ? 

S3. Difference of ^Ivyj]^ siouXoi/, and <pp£vac, 
frlso uf rt/iEvvg, Ufjov, and vabg I 

84. Is a rude or cultivated age most favourable 
to original poetic genius ? Illustrate your opinion 
by reference to any ancient or modern nations ? 

-85. What does Plato mean by calling the rhap- 
sodi of his time kpfirivtwv tpurivhg, and what is the 
corresponding expression of Horace ? 

86. If any poets preceded Homer and Hesiod, 
what would be the probable subject of their lays. 
(Hor. A.P.) 

87. What are the opinions respecting Homer's 
age, expressed by Herodotus, Thucydides, Cicero, 
Strabo, and Juvenal ? | 

88. What date is assigned by the author of the 
life of Homer attributed to Hercdotus, and what 
are the reasons for doubting the genuineness of 
that treatise ? 

89. Who were designed by the name 'Pa^oj^ot, 

h 2 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 149 

at different periods, from the heroic age to the 
time of Plato ? 

90. Show from their history the propriety of 
the term {nroKpiral nrwv, by which Hesychius 
explains 'Paxpw&ol ? 

91. They were formerly called 'AjovwSoi, why? 

92. Did they use an accompaniment with their 
recitation ? (Plutarch.) 

93. Show from Homer what was in his time the 
manner of life, office, and estimation of the bard I 
On what occasions, with what accompaniments, 
and for what rewards he exercised his art \ 

94. Is there any example of a similar order of 
persons in modern times I 

95. To what period do Wood and others fix the 
first familiar use of the alphabet in Greek, and on 
what grounds ? Whence did they receive it I 

96. What are the earlist Grecian written docu- 
ments of which we have historical evidence ? In 
what manner and with what materials were they 
written \ 

97. Explain the manner of writing (5ovGTpo<j>r\- 
$ov and klovtj^ov. 

98. What celebrated inscription now in this 
country has its letters, kiov^ov \ 

99. Mention some of the occasions on which 
Homer would probably have made mention of 
writing, or some customs which would have been 
superseded by writing, if it had been then known 
and practised I 

100. What were the services which entitled 
Ulysses to the title, TTToX'nropOog \ 

101. Ovroi (Homer and Hesiod) dot 61 iroiriaav- 
T£Q Qtoyoviriv "EXXrim (Herods.) Is this true I 

102. What traces are there in early Greek 
poetry, or in history, of a purer religion in Greece 
previous to Homer I 

h 2 



150 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

103. Wherein did his differ from that which 
prevailed in the time of Socrates ? 

104. What seem to have been the notions res- 
pecting fate entertained by Homer I 

105. What was the nature of the regal autho- 
rity in Homer's times \ How did it differ in peace 
und war, and how was it limited \ 

106. How, and on what occasions, is the cx/c^tt- 
t/oov used by the chiefs in Homer ? To what 
other orders of persons is it also assigned \ 

107. What different classes of persons are de- 
noted by Kripvtceg in Homer ? How do they differ 
from 7T/o£(r/3ac ? What was the symbol that pro- 
tected them in war \ 

108. Show by examples that no certain rule 
can be laid down for the use of the augment in 
Homer ? To what does Heyne attribute its first 
introduction ? 

109. What reason is there for supposing it, as 
well as the dual number, to have been unknown 
to the language in its earlier state I 

110. In verbs compounded with irspi, what rule 
prevails as to the use of the augment, and for 
what obvious reason I 

111. Difference of 6/zocrat, tTrojuoVai, and a:ro- 
piocrai. 

112. By the un-Homeric use of what word 
in the Hymn to Ceres is that poem proved to be 
more modern than Homer? The word "EktjXoc, 
which is always applied in Homer to mental tran- 
quillity, freedom from vexation, and not to the 
stillness of inanimate objects, in which sense it is 
used in the H} r mn to Ceres. 

113. The word <$ai(p(jwv has two significations, 
viz. warlike, from Safe the fight, and prudent, 
from Safjvm, to learn. In the former signification 
it is used in the first twenty-three books of the 
Iliad, in the latter in the twenty-fourth book of 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 



151 



the Iliad, a -id in the Odyssey, a proof of the dif- 
ferent authorship of these compositions. 

114. The <f>a\og, afterwards called kgjvoc, was a 
curved elevation on the top and front of the hel- 
met, in which was inserted the Ao^oe, or plume, 
and which, by its hardness and firmness, furnished 
an additional defence against the blow of an enemy ; 
<pa\apa were the side coverings of the helmet, 
consisting of several straps covered with metal 
scales or plates, and fastened under the chin, simi- 
lar to the cheek-piece in the armour of horses. 
The <f>a\og of a royal helmet extended both for- 
wards and backwards, (hence such helmet was 
called o/uL^ifaXog,) and had four holes or hollows 
for so many plumes, hence the helmet was called 
T£Tpa(pa\r}pGQ. The rpvtyaXtia, derived from Tpvw 
and <pa\og, was the helmet of a common person, 
bored in the 0aAoe to receive one plume. 

115. 'EvSt-^ia, ImdiZia, (II. a. 597), signify "in 
a direction from left to right. 11 In the innermost 
part of the chamber, where they performed the 
sacred ceremonies, and where he who presided over 
them sat, stood the goblet ; there began the pour- 
ing out of the wine, and thence the cup went 
round in a direction from left to right, the presi- 
dent commencing with the person on his right 
hand. As both religion and custom enjoined the 
direction from left to right, this, added to the 
greater readiness naturally felt to go in that direc- 
tion, soon gave the person who did so the appear- 
ance of dexterity; hence, in times after the 
Homeric, S&og and l-idltZiog acquired the meaning 
of dexterous. The Homeric expression, Kpijrripag 
£7r£OTt^ayro 7roroTo, signifies no more than " they 
rilled the cups quite lull of wine, to the brim.' 1 
Virgil seems to be ignorant of this meaning, and 
to intend an actual crowning, when, in JEn. i. 723, 
and iii. 525, he says, " cratera corona indnit. 11 



152 TREATISE OX HOMER. 

116. The aiuHpiKVTreWov was a double cup, i. e. 
a cup at both ends, with a common bottom ; it is 
an adjective, and always is joined with ^i-irag. 

117. 'ETnrrjSac is not by elision for E7riTti^kg y 
for elision only takes place when three vowels meet, 
as 'AkXeIc for 'A/cX^e, but it is an adverb signi- 
fiying, (II. a. 142,) "as many as are proper," 
derived from "Wt t6&, for that very purpose. 

118. The original meaning of Boog would seem 
to be sharp or pointed, derived rather from Ofiyw 
than flew, so also Ta\vQ, Oaaawv ; in this sense it 
is used as the proper name of the Echinades, 
called in the Odyssey, Ooal. They were islands 
at the mouth of the Achelous, stretching out to 
seaward in a number of points, hence derived from 
'ExJivog, a hedgehog, or sea-urchin ; from this 
original meaning of Ooog it next came to signify 
swift, as 6Z,vq signifies both sharp and swift, and 
then brave, or prompt in action, hence terrible, as 
applied to Mars. When applied to night it de- 
notes the rapidity with winch night comes on, 
together with the terrors and dangers by which it 
is accompanied. 

119. The Epic language ended as a living one 
with Plato. 

120. The radical idea of tt£vic»?, the fir tree, is 
pointedness, and not bitterness ; mpKog, in its 
oldest sense, meant sharp, penetrating, hence, 
bitter — hence, pungo, in Latin ; fye irtviefig, applied 
to an arrow, will thus signify pointed and not 
bitter ; wevKaXifiog, applied to the mind, may sig- 
nify sharp, penetrating. 

121. 'Arip has three significations in Homer, dif- 
fering only in degree, viz. air, fog, darkness. In the 
Epic or Homeric language it is used in the feminine 
gender, later writers use it in the masculine. Butt- 
man thinks r^ipiog always signifies "early in the 
morning, 1 ' even in II. y. 7. deriving it from 3/x, 
early. 



TREATISE ON HOMER. 153 

122. Butiman overturns Heyne's argument to 
prove that Asia was the country of Homer, viz. 
from the position he assigns the Locrians, Trzpiiv 
Ei/j3on?cs by showing that ntpav does not signify 
there " beyond," but " opposite." That this is the 
true sense is shown by the narrative ; the poet is 
leading us from the Boeotians, through the Pho- 
cians, to the Locrians, and from them to Eubcea. 

123. TToi-rvziv, derived from ttviw, before Ho- 
mer's time, would appear to signify, to be out 
of breath; in his time it was softened down to 
the idea of great exertion, moving, bustling about, 
as II. a. 600. In later writers it conveyed the 
idea of much less activity, hence its application in 
the twenty-fourth bcok of the Iliad to the very 
moderate exertion of the heroes attendant on 
Achilles, would argue a different author. 

124. There would seem to be only two meals in 
Homer's time, apiarov being always applied to the 
first or breakfast, Suttvov and Sopirov being applied 
to both the first and second, never to a third. 

125. II. o. 358, Sovpbg iptorj, is the motion of 
the spear; II. 7r. 302, iro^tjjiov tpiori, is rest or 
cessation from war : how reconcile these appa- 
rently opposite meanings \ In the latter it sig- 
nifies retiring from, withdrawing from, resting 
from. 

126. Nvictoc dficiXyog is the depth or dead of 
night, a metaphor taken from a distended udder 
or an udder at its full, which was said to be I 
dpokyq ; not from the milking time, which was i 
the evening. 

127. Buttman does not think that ovAcu, oi/Ao- 
"Xyrai means whole, unground barley, derived from 
vXog ; he thinks that ouAcu, v\ai is the same as 
the Latin mola, coarsely pounded or bruised bar- 
ley, and derives it from a'Xcw, same as £W, to 
beat. 



154 TREATISE ON HOMER. 

128. Difference between trans and ultra, and 
their corresponding words, irapav and iripa I When 
I say trans Euphraten, I imagine myself near that 
river, and speak positively of the other side, as, 
he is fled over the Euphrates, in which the thought 
is, he is now on the other side. When I say ultra 
Euphraten, I am at a distance from that river, and 
speak of the other side only in opposition to this 
side, as, he is fled beyond the Euphrates, in which 
the thought is, he is no where to be found from 
this place to that river. 

129. 'E0£/\ci> implies the wish or desire for some- 
thing, the execution of which is in one's own 
power ; jdovXofiat, in this sense, is applied only to 
the Gods ; generally it signifies, to wish for some- 
thing, the execution of which is not in one's 
power, it signifies also to prefer ; We\u>, not so ; 
nearly the same difference exists between to will, 
and to wish. 

130. Some derive TreXaayoi from 7ri\ayog, men 
coming over the ocean ; others from weXapyoi, 
storks, being a migratory race ; others from two 
Celtic words, Pel, high, and Lasg, a chain of 
mountains, the inhabitants of a mountainous coun- 
try. The old Pelasgic tongue had an affinity with 
the Celtic. 

131. The war of the " Septem contra Thebas" 
was the first instance of a league among Grecian 
princes. The Acarnanians were the only people 
of Greece who had not the honour of partaking 
in the Trojan war, being separated from the rest 
of Greece by lofty mountains. 



THE END. 






E&RATA. 



Page 8, for 6i\ro<r, read 5e\rog. 

11, for (v, read kv. 

16, for Ot'xaX/af, read 0\xa.\iaQ. 

16, for uoioo'i, pa^udol, read itotSoi or pa^wSoi. 

17, for avTj3<KO£, read uvridtKog. 

20, for 6ia<JKevaffT>i<T, read bia<rK.cva(n)\Q. 

23, for are valuable, read is valuable. 

24, for 6/3eXife<v, read o/3e\i£etv. 

34, for ' and ', read ' and \ 

34, for 'IcoviKct, read 'Iwvdcd. 

37, for biographies, read biographies. 

39, for 'A\v(3r)s, read 'A\u/S>io 

1 46; for Macineca, read Maciucca. 

49, for Aivelao, read Alveiao. 

74, for he swallowed, read Saturn swallowed. 

99, for vvkti, read wkti. 

103, for seeming, read seems. 

106, for uc~rep, read ucrip. 

110, place 59, before The following arc the laws, &c. 



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